Unaipon - The Set
Commentary by designer Peter England, March 2004
"The guy on the 50 dollar note" - that was how I was first introduced
to David Unaipon, and it seems to be the common point of reference when
introducing the inspiration for this show to most people. The formally
dressed, snowy haired man, with gentle face and wise penetrating eyes,
smiling out confidently and knowingly from a plastic piece of currency.
Closer inspection of the design of this bill starts to reveal something
of the man - a scientific looking drawing, a small Christian church and
a hand-written quote; "As a full-blooded member of my race I think I
may claim to be the first - but I hope, not the last - to produce an
enduring record of our customs, beliefs and imaginings".
The Show's first image is a painted abstraction of this $50 note* -
I have taken particular elements of its design and enlarged, distorted
or exaggerated them. I want the painting to begin to deconstruct the
recognisable graphics of a piece of money so we might begin to reconstruct
an essence of the man himself. His right eye stares out at us in massive
isolation from the centre of the painting. A spiral swirls from its centre.
His immaculate neck tie is off to the right under a scratched out number "50".
The word Australia vibrates and stammers down the left margin.
As light comes up behind the painted cloth we begin to see through
to a man floating across the stage. I want to leave behind the first
knowledge of David Unaipon as "the guy on the 50 dollar note" and go
on a journey with the dancers, the music, and the stories Frances Rings
has told me. Stories of weaving seem to resonate with David Unaipon's
life. Women cocooned in red woven mats claim the space, men draw out
string lines and create 'webs' that cut across it - these are the beginnings,
the threads of a life.
Reading and researching David Unaipon exposes a truly extraordinary
and inspirational renaissance man with a rich traditional and western
education; a spiritual man who was able to open his heart to both Indigenous
and Christian beliefs, a musician, a scientist, a philosopher and a dreamer.
A man who crossed racial, religious, and intellectual boundaries - and
yet who was bound by the prevailing ignorance of a society obsessed with
discrimination - of "drawing the line" and dividing. But in spite of
this David Unaipon maintained all dignity and integrity in every one
of his many pursuits - in essence he maintained his dreams and crossed
all divisions.
Like a giant laboratory light, a beam of illumination rises to reveal
a glowing white strip which divides our stage in half. A boundary of
light is created. Dancers cross the "boundary", some move up and down
it, others ignore it altogether. A sense of scientific measure, ideological
division, and questions of order and chaos are posed.
The final image seeks to send our imagination into the realms of the
eternal and of dreams. This is a place where David Unaipon seemed very
at home. A life-long fascination with perpetual motion, combined with
a searching passion for the spiritual, inspires ideas about the great
poetry of his life. A field of "stars" inhabited by a myriad of symbols
and abstractions, all interwoven with lines of measure and proportion,
floating illuminated in a sea of black... A universe of possibilities.
*Thanks to Brian Sadgrove for kind permission to reproduce parts of
his design for the Australian 50 dollar note.
|
