“Church in the scrub at night,”, 1994
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
Size (cm): 79x104x4cm
Artbank Collection
Ian W. Abdulla (b. 1947 – d. 2011) called himself a ‘Riverland Nunga’ as a way to take account for his mixed heritage: his mother was a Ngarrindjeri woman and his father Afghan. A Ngarrindjeri man who grew up on the banks of the Murray in South Australia, he is considered one of Australia’s most important contemporary Indigenous artists. Hetti Perkins, Aboriginal Australian art curator and writer, describes Ian Abdulla as pioneering the “rural” Indigenous contemporary artist.
Abdulla’s paintings often focus on his childhood and the unsettled life of the Ngarrindjeri. His work typically includes a narrative text, or gloss, that explains the painting in a diaristic way, often placed directly in the centre. As Perkin’s suggests, “His experiences are shared by many Aboriginal people dispossessed of their land and marginalised into a life of seasonal work and scavenging.”
This painting is an affecting and striking one. It shows how poverty can directly affect an individual’s faith in God and life. It represents the resilience of the community to continue their congregation in the open under lights in the scrub. In the painting the immateriality of the floodlights become more solid like yellow vaulted walls. The painting is matter of fact, refusing victimhood in a mode of stoic assertion.
