Theres no place like home In Baz Luhrmanns movie Australia references were made to the now timeless cult

movie The Wizard of Oz . Luhrmann received bad reviews for his ambitious portrayal of Australia in the period where Darwin was bombed and indigenous peoples where treated as less than second class citizens. The inclusion of an American film classic, where all who encountered it sat spellbound by its imagery emphasised our collective desire for the spectacle of the cinema. The white fellas dreaming projected in the darkness; philosophy and the impossible made ethereal, fleeting and experiential. Alan Kelly comes from that time, a time we look back at through the glamourised, safe cinematic reflections of privelege and consumerised culture. In Kellys paintings we are seduced by a recognizable style, a European style of painting unlike the dots of many contemporary indigenous artists. It is the style of expression Alan Kelly was introduced to as a child, a style and form of representation based upon European sensibilities of near, middle and far, landscape rather than bush, perspective over country. A white fellas dreaming, casting its seductive rigour of the objective and the remembered over that which was previously central to Noongar cultural practice. The wrench from ones own culture is something many contemporary Australians can empathise with. Having that culture erased and replaced with an alien unknown culture in your own land is something few experience. Alan Kellys paintings seem romantic, nostalgic, recognisable and simple. They are complex and radical shifts from tradition, emphasizing humankinds ability to adapt in any situation. Kellys recent paintings move to an ever simpler reduction of his themes of the land; sunset, sunrise, moonlight and their effects upon the lands he knew as a child. Noongar art has evolved from its early and total exposure to European colonial ideas of cultural expression. It has taken far longer for its practitioners to be recognised and their practice to be considered as worthy in an artworld where originality is tied to bloodlines. Alan Kelly represents an historical moment that many Australians have tried to forget. Kelly is now an old fella, a grand exponent of a style now regarded as significant for its melding of European and traditional approaches. The work of Albert Namatjira has been considered important for the technical mastery of the traditional European technique of watercolour. He to was taught to paint in the European style. Alan Kellys work builds from earlier Noongar artists such as Barry Loo and Revel Cooper from the 1940s. They also worked with watercolour and pastels, mediums where drawing is emphasised in the realisation of a work. In Alan Kellys most recent works the loose handling of media emphasises drawing where detail is replaced by a sparse dry handling of materials. Alan Kellys work consistently returns to his country, his land and home.

Charlie Colbung is an emerging artist greatly influenced by the Carrolup school of art. His earliest influences came from the renowned female artist, Aunty Bella Kelly who taught him to paint in the landscape tradition. Charlie has gone on to develop a unique contemporary style of painting poignantly capturing the social and emotional impact of the stolen generations on Noongar people today. (House. P. 2009). While Alan kellys work looks back to places and lands he knew as a child Charlie Colbung presents an arid wide brown land where glimpses of tradition shimmer like mirages in a desert land. Colbungs astonishing series of works Mother & Coolingahs confronts the viewer with a vast emptiness, the dead heart. Tiny figures stand dwarfed by the magnitude of such desolation. These images could seem depressing in the hands of a lesser artist, instead they inspire hope. Remnant symbols are scattered across the space where only the subjects know their meaning .

Left opposite page. Alan Kelly, Blue Hill (2009) Above. Charlie Colbung & Alan Kelly @ north gallery Below. Charlie Colbung, Mother & Coolingahs III

Colbungs works play with style and Western notions of painting. From subtle blending of space where land shimmers like the bitumen roads in summer, horizons alter and land floats mysteriously encompassing everything. It is colour that brings hope in these vast empty canvasses. Space no European can comprehend until they abandon their city lives and journey to the dead heart. TheMother & Coolingah paintings explore a range of approaches to land. Subtle changes occur between each work where Colbung skillfully plays with painterly tricks or takes risks in realising what a series of body stripe type bands may look like where it may previously have been perceived as land. It is this depth and subtlety, with recognisable western style depictions of figures, that deftly inverts the colonial depiction of Australia by the first European artists, who often sought to portray indigenous people in the forests leaning one legged upon their spears; also referenced in Luhrmanns Australia. In Charlie Colbungs work the characters within the work are of the land, whether to return or simply visit. Luhrmanns vision of Australia saw the young boy Nullah denied visiting his traditional lands, with his elder King George, by the well meaning Lady Sarah Astley. Each time she sought to protect Nullah her actions brought more disaster, placing a child in situations no mother or father would wish for their own. Colbungs figures offer enigmatic narratives, silent stories where their backs turn away from viewers as they turn or start to move across land where no trees sprout, no water races through and no semblance of westernised culture impedes this vision. Here there are no romanticised European style forests only a vast emptiness experienced away from the coast where the so called dead heart resides. The reds, ochres, brown and yellows of the land are repeated throughout the works, colour as a direct reference to places mostly experienced by many from the air.

Charlie Colbungs revisiting of these moments on the edge of space alters the scenario, changes perspective,plays with surreal juxtapositions offering endless possibilites and reinterpretations. In the last century such possibilites would be unimaginable, now they are real. The Spanish surrealist Juan Miro famously stated he was painting the monster . The surreal aspects of Charlie Colbungs emptiness sees an artist examining the void of loss, removal, erasure and their respective demons. We are ultimately alone, yet in Colbungs works there is always the suggestion of a family core. Hope exists whereas in European philosophy there exists isloation, consumerism and the post nuclear family. Fundamental differences in world outlooks from a people who have adapted to the modern world faster than most others and have survived to tell of the abyss. Noongar art never fitted in with the Papunya Tula model of expression, while also not able to compete with the new urban indigenous art from the eastern states where raw naive figuration emphasised a childlike westernised rendering of land, memory and loss or urban tales of a culture adapting. Noongar art has finally begun to be seen as something to be valued. Alan Kelly and Charlie Colbung offer visions from both sides of a cultural mirror yet both reflect in their own ways upon the importance of home. In the Wizard of Oz, reunification and reappraisal of character envelopes Dorothy and Toto. In Baz Luhrmanns Australia the ending is more open. In the work of Alan Kelly and Charlie Colbung it is the documenation of time, in the same way art has always documented time and where home changes through the seasons.
Jeremy Blank, North Gallery, Perth XI / 2009

Charlie Colbung, Family Connections III (2008) The difference between the work of Alan Kelly and Charlie Colbung is uniquely visible through their associations and links to country. Kellys work is that of reflection, memory and longing. Charlie Colbungs paintings explore ideas regarding country, belonging, place and travel through unmarked barely traceable lands. Both artists share a heritage, while each artists perspective has been formed by their experience. Two members of the same culture generations apart, one taken from his family lands the other removed through time and exposure to a world unknown. In Luhrmanns cinematic vision of Australia Nullah eventually returns to his grandfathers lands. The viewer is left to imagine some romantic notion of traditional connection. In Colbungs visions we see a similar frozen moment. In painting the moment is frozen but extended, never changing, allowing the viewer to reconsider, change, rerun or consider other endings or outcomes. The cinema has to deny an extension, change scene or end. The white fella dreams of Luhrmann remain unfulfilled, any attempt to complete them would cross a cultural divide, further framing a culture already altered by intervention.

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