by Jim Elmslie
At times, the landing page of the website of the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) features an extremely rare and culturally significant shield which also now occupies a prominent position in the Gallery’s permanent collection on display. One of only seven shields of its kind, a Murlapakashield of the Kaurna Miyurna or the Adelaide Plains people, it is unique to its maker.
In July 2020 the AGSA acquired this very rare and important Kaurna Murlapaka (also spelt Mulubakka) shield when the Federal Government, through its National Cultural Heritage Account, agreed to contribute $100,000 towards the purchase. Other funds were provided by the Tarnanthi Festival of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art and BHP. The work, from a private Adelaide collection, had been bought from a gallery in Sydney who had sourced the work from a private collection in Connecticut, USA.
Caption: KAURNA PEOPLE, South Australia. Murlapaka, 1800s, Adelaide. Wood (eucalyptus) and earth pigments, 73.0 x 23.0 cm. Purchased with the support of the Australian Government through the National Cultural Heritage Account and through Tarnanthi: Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art supported by BHP 2020. Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. Photo:Grant Hancock. 20202S1, agsa.sa.gov.au
Reflecting the increasing prominence of First Nations art in Australia’s leading cultural institutions, the shield now occupies a prominent and permanent position in the gallery and on the gallery’s website. What this Murlapaka embodies goes much deeper than a ‘normal’ piece of art: it is a direct link to the settlement/invasion of what is now known as South Australia and to the Kaurna people who lived there for millennia prior to the arrival of Europeans.
What is particularly interesting about the AGSA’s acquisition of this shield is the deep and highly emotional engagement with the contemporary custodians of Kaurna culture that the purchase has engendered. Indeed it seems that a genuine act of reconciliation has occurred where an old and revered institution, on behalf of the people of South Australia, has meaningfully embraced the original inhabitants of this region. And, probably more importantly, the Kaurna people have also celebrated the acquisition.
To investigate this new acquisition I contacted Nici Cumpston, Barkandji artist and AGSA Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, and Gloria Strzelecki, Associate Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art. The notes below come primarily from a series of excellent recordings produced by the AGSA, in particular the informal lunchtime talk by Gloria Strzelecki and First Friday evening conversation by Senior Kaurna man, Uncle Mickey O’Brien.
Gloria Strzelecki: After almost 2 years of research and consultation the gallery was able to finalise the acquisition of the Murlapaka, a broad shield that was made by a Kaurna artist in the 19th century. I thought I would briefly talk about the importance of shields, pre-contact but also post-contact, for Aboriginal people and then I thought I\’d briefly talk about the acquisition process.
GS: Let me begin by talking about the Murlapaka: it is a broad shield that was made by a Kaurna artist and would have been used by a Kaurna person. It has been dated to the early 19th century and it\’s made from the inner bark of a eucalyptus tree and it is one of two types of shields that were made by Kaurna people. The second type of shield is a Wokali which I won\’t go into today but it was made from the outer bark of a eucalyptus tree so there are some similarities and some differences between the two types of shields but today I am really only talking about the Murlapaka. So to give you an idea of what the Murlapaka actually looks like it is usually characterised by an oval or oblong oval shape and in this instance the Murlapaka on display is quite an oblong oval shape. It has tapering tips at either end and it has incisions in a chevron pattern towards the end of the tips and also has two parallel lines that have been incised in opposing arc fashions.
GS: Some other Murlapaka will have Chevron patterning across the surface. Murlapaka are frequently painted with a white clay and natural pigments and in this instance the Murlapaka has remnants of a red pigment in the incisions. The Murlapaka has a handle that has been made out of a separate piece of eucalyptus. This would have been made while the bark was still fresh and young so when it would have been quite malleable and it had been placed inside two holes that have been made in the centre of the shield and as the wood would have dried it would have secured the handle into place. The Murlapaka here on display is quite special in the fact that the handle is still very much intact. Many Murlapaka and other shields frequently have their handles missing. So this Murlapaka is special in that the handle is still very much a part of the shield.
GS: The Murlapaka would have been used during ceremony and would have also been used as a defence during internal disputes or even external disputes among groups of Aboriginal people. They would have also been used in practice training amongst Aboriginal people and you can see on this Murlapaka that there are markings on the surface of the shield where perhaps spears or clubs would have been used against or thrown against the wood. In post-contact Australia the shield becomes a very potent object or tool in the battle and resistance against colonising forces and was used to defend and fight for Aboriginal people as well as land and as a result we see that very few shields from this period, especially those made and used by Kaurna people because they were often stolen, destroyed or sent to international collections. In fact this Murlapaka is one of only seven known of its type to exist anywhere in the world and we know this from the research that was carried out during the acquisition process. We do not know the maker\’s name and we may not know the maker\’s name even with further research. This is primarily due to the regard held for cultural materials such as the Murlapaka when it was first collected. Aboriginal cultural objects and works of art were often collected as representations of Aboriginal people and culture rather than as an art form and they were held as ethnographic and anthropological examples.
GS: In 1955 the gallery started to collect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander works. Then Director, Robert Campbell, noted that the gallery would be collecting works based on them being works of art rather than anthropological or ethnographical objects. So today shields are very much viewed as powerful symbols of identity and important cultural and artistic objects that do represent the survival and enduring strength of Aboriginal people. Here in gallery two, where the Murlapaka is currently positioned on display, it is amongst works by Alexander Schramm and Oscar Firstrom and these works depict Aboriginal people after European settlement. I think most importantly it does remind all of us visiting the gallery, or working here, that indeed the gallery does stand on Kaurna country.
GS: The Murlapaka was acquired through the generous support of the Australian government through the National Cultural Heritage Account which is a fund that enables institutions such as the gallery to acquire works that are prohibitive in cost or that would otherwise be held in private collections nationally or even internationally. As part of this process the gallery engaged two very well respected researchers to compile an extensive report about the Murlapaka. Dr. Jonathan Jones, a Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi artist and researcher and Dr. Carol Cooper, a researcher of cultural material from the Southeast of Australia. Together Jones and Cooper compiled research around the Murlapaka in particular by looking at other shields including Murlapakas and Wokalis from the 19th century but also looking at shields from the 20th century. In doing this they visited national and international collections including the British Museum in London, where there is an example of a Murlapaka that is quite similar in characteristics to this Murlapaka. Part of the research saw Jones and Cooper looking at the work of W.A. Cawthorne, who was an artist very much interested in Kaurna people and culture and who recorded a number of observations in his watercolours and other drawings as well in a written text that he wrote in 1844. This is one of the earliest observations of Kaurna people and culture and Jones and Cooper looked at these watercolours and the references he made to both the Wokali and Murlapaka shields. The gallery does not have any works by Cawthorne in its collection but we do have the early records of depictions of Murlapaka and Wokali shields done by George French Angus. He compiled a folio entitled South Australia Illustrated and in Plate 6 there is an illustration of a Murlapaka and Wokali and the gallery does have this lithograph in its collection.
GS: The gallery was successful in its application for funding through the National Cultural Heritage Account and with subsequent funding by Tarnanthi Festival of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art and through BHP the gallery was able to acquire this Murlapaka. The Murlapaka I think most importantly now will remain in in the public domain especially in Adelaide, which is the traditional land of the Kaurna people and it will be the first Murlapaka to enter the gallery\’s collection and as such it will be on permanent display where it can be publicly celebrated and viewed by all.
During his talk at the Art Gallery of South Australia Uncle Mickey O’Brien reflected on what the acquisition of the shield meant to him as a Kaurna person.
Mickey O’Brien: It is wonderful to sit here with the Murlapaka shield which was an important part of our culture that has now been brought back to its home. It\’s just such an honour for us to be able to share this with the public and to pay our respects to the Kaurna people and acknowledge our ongoing connection and our ongoing responsibility for this wonderful land, the Adelaide plains.
MO: I think one of the things that I\’ve thought about is ‘what is a shield?’ It protects culture and its placement here today does just that. Firstly I think it largely represents identity. The shield itself is a symbol of our people because it is like the Coat of Arms you know, it has the design, the colours, that represents and signifies and separates us from other groups of nations that also have shields and so it really is a symbol representing our people. I think it\’s also a symbol of obviously representing our craft in making those shields and it is something that symbolises protection, but protection isn’t always physical, protection is really in the sense a holistic thing: it\’s about protecting the culture.
MO: I\’ve also recognized that the shield comes from a tree and a tree itself has that knowledge and wisdom of the land because it is connected to the oldest living thing in the world. When you take the bark off that tree you\’re leaving the image of that shield in the tree which becomes a sacred tree that signifies that the person has selected that tree carefully. A person has spent time and energy removing that bark to not kill the tree and so therefore that shield itself, when we remove it from the tree, has now that knowledge and wisdom of that tree but also the land and so it is not something that you did every day. It took a lot of time and energy to create it and so you wanted it to be something that would last forever and as we\’ve seen this shield here at this stage it is ageless, but it is very important to see it here particularly at the art gallery.
Curator, Nici Cumpston, summing up the importance of the Murlapaka noted that:
It is the first shield made by a Kaurna person, dated to the early contact period, to enter the Gallery’s collection. Through its significant acquisition, the Gallery continues its commitment to building and sharing Kaurna culture while acknowledging that AGSA Kaurna yartangka yuwanthi (AGSA stands on Kaurna Country).
* Thanks to Dr. Lisa Slade, Assistant Director, Artistic Programs, AGSA, for suggesting the term, ‘Kaurna touchstone’.