History, culture celebrated at 25th Garma festival
It has been 25 years since the annual Garma Festival's humble beginnings, and the Yothu Yindi Foundation, which organises the event in northeast Arnhem Land, is paying homage to those who started it.
"This year is a real acknowledgement and a proper nod to the Yunupingu brothers who had some pretty large ideas for the Garma Festival," Youthu Yindi Foundation chief executive Denise Bowden told AAP.
"Many of us had some catching up to do when we realised what they had created because now it's a nationally iconic event attracting 3500 people each year to a very remote location."
The location is the culturally significant ceremonial grounds of Gulkula, where each year art, song, bunggul (dance) and storytelling are showcased.
Garma has become an important policy forum, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Indigenous Affairs Minister Malarndirri McCarthy and other politicians slated to speak at the four-day festival.
These talks co-exist with discussions of culture, education and other significant issues for First Nations people.
Ms Bowden said the 2025 Garma theme "rom ga waŋa wataŋu", or "the law of the land, standing firm", reflected the Yolngu fight for empowerment and land rights.
The most recent example of this fight was in March, when the High Court upheld a Federal Court decision that found the Gumatj clan's Country in northeast Arnhem Land was not acquired "on just terms" before being leased to the Swiss-Australian mining consortium Nabalco in 1968.
The late Gumatj leader Dr Yunupingu brought the case in 2019, alongside an application for native title on behalf of his clan.
"A lot of cultural elements and deeply ingrained beliefs of culture still exist here," Ms Bowden said.
"You hear it in the language, you hear it in the songs, you hear it in the dance and the law of the land."
Garma Festival runs until Monday.
What began as a backyard barbecue and a "jam session" now attracts thousands of people to one of Australia's most remote regions each year.
It has been 25 years since the annual Garma Festival's humble beginnings, and the Yothu Yindi Foundation, which organises the event in northeast Arnhem Land, is paying homage to those who started it.
"This year is a real acknowledgement and a proper nod to the Yunupingu brothers who had some pretty large ideas for the Garma Festival," Youthu Yindi Foundation chief executive Denise Bowden told AAP.
"Many of us had some catching up to do when we realised what they had created because now it's a nationally iconic event attracting 3500 people each year to a very remote location."
The location is the culturally significant ceremonial grounds of Gulkula, where each year art, song, bunggul (dance) and storytelling are showcased.
Garma has become an important policy forum, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Indigenous Affairs Minister Malarndirri McCarthy and other politicians slated to speak at the four-day festival.
These talks co-exist with discussions of culture, education and other significant issues for First Nations people.
Ms Bowden said the 2025 Garma theme "rom ga waŋa wataŋu", or "the law of the land, standing firm", reflected the Yolngu fight for empowerment and land rights.
The most recent example of this fight was in March, when the High Court upheld a Federal Court decision that found the Gumatj clan's Country in northeast Arnhem Land was not acquired "on just terms" before being leased to the Swiss-Australian mining consortium Nabalco in 1968.
The late Gumatj leader Dr Yunupingu brought the case in 2019, alongside an application for native title on behalf of his clan.
"A lot of cultural elements and deeply ingrained beliefs of culture still exist here," Ms Bowden said.
"You hear it in the language, you hear it in the songs, you hear it in the dance and the law of the land."
Garma Festival runs until Monday.
What began as a backyard barbecue and a "jam session" now attracts thousands of people to one of Australia's most remote regions each year.
It has been 25 years since the annual Garma Festival's humble beginnings, and the Yothu Yindi Foundation, which organises the event in northeast Arnhem Land, is paying homage to those who started it.
"This year is a real acknowledgement and a proper nod to the Yunupingu brothers who had some pretty large ideas for the Garma Festival," Youthu Yindi Foundation chief executive Denise Bowden told AAP.
"Many of us had some catching up to do when we realised what they had created because now it's a nationally iconic event attracting 3500 people each year to a very remote location."
The location is the culturally significant ceremonial grounds of Gulkula, where each year art, song, bunggul (dance) and storytelling are showcased.
Garma has become an important policy forum, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Indigenous Affairs Minister Malarndirri McCarthy and other politicians slated to speak at the four-day festival.
These talks co-exist with discussions of culture, education and other significant issues for First Nations people.
Ms Bowden said the 2025 Garma theme "rom ga waŋa wataŋu", or "the law of the land, standing firm", reflected the Yolngu fight for empowerment and land rights.
The most recent example of this fight was in March, when the High Court upheld a Federal Court decision that found the Gumatj clan's Country in northeast Arnhem Land was not acquired "on just terms" before being leased to the Swiss-Australian mining consortium Nabalco in 1968.
The late Gumatj leader Dr Yunupingu brought the case in 2019, alongside an application for native title on behalf of his clan.
"A lot of cultural elements and deeply ingrained beliefs of culture still exist here," Ms Bowden said.
"You hear it in the language, you hear it in the songs, you hear it in the dance and the law of the land."
Garma Festival runs until Monday.
What began as a backyard barbecue and a "jam session" now attracts thousands of people to one of Australia's most remote regions each year.
It has been 25 years since the annual Garma Festival's humble beginnings, and the Yothu Yindi Foundation, which organises the event in northeast Arnhem Land, is paying homage to those who started it.
"This year is a real acknowledgement and a proper nod to the Yunupingu brothers who had some pretty large ideas for the Garma Festival," Youthu Yindi Foundation chief executive Denise Bowden told AAP.
"Many of us had some catching up to do when we realised what they had created because now it's a nationally iconic event attracting 3500 people each year to a very remote location."
The location is the culturally significant ceremonial grounds of Gulkula, where each year art, song, bunggul (dance) and storytelling are showcased.
Garma has become an important policy forum, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Indigenous Affairs Minister Malarndirri McCarthy and other politicians slated to speak at the four-day festival.
These talks co-exist with discussions of culture, education and other significant issues for First Nations people.
Ms Bowden said the 2025 Garma theme "rom ga waŋa wataŋu", or "the law of the land, standing firm", reflected the Yolngu fight for empowerment and land rights.
The most recent example of this fight was in March, when the High Court upheld a Federal Court decision that found the Gumatj clan's Country in northeast Arnhem Land was not acquired "on just terms" before being leased to the Swiss-Australian mining consortium Nabalco in 1968.
The late Gumatj leader Dr Yunupingu brought the case in 2019, alongside an application for native title on behalf of his clan.
"A lot of cultural elements and deeply ingrained beliefs of culture still exist here," Ms Bowden said.
"You hear it in the language, you hear it in the songs, you hear it in the dance and the law of the land."
Garma Festival runs until Monday.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sydney Morning Herald
6 minutes ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
These daring artists shocked the world. A new show reveals why
When Annie Leibovitz shot a naked, heavily pregnant Demi Moore for the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991, it caused an uproar. Some retailers in the United States, including supermarket chains Giant and Safeway, refused to stock the magazine, while others wrapped it in brown paper. 'We are a family-oriented business,' huffed a spokesperson for Giant in the Washington Post at the time. 'Very young children go to the magazine section while waiting for their parents to finish shopping. We did what we thought was right.' Supporters, though, saw the image as a refreshingly empowering depiction of pregnancy; the magazine's sales and subscriptions rose in the aftermath. Remarkably, more than 50 years earlier, Australian photographer Max Dupain had taken a similarly provocative photograph in Sydney. His 1939 Birth of Venus features the silhouette of a naked pregnant woman flanked by two sculptures, all reminiscent of Botticelli's Venus. It's a stunning image, says Emmanuelle de l'Ecotais, co-curator of Man Ray and Max Dupain, a new show at Heide Museum of Modern Art that, for the first time, pairs the pioneering photographers who worked on opposite sides of the world. The show includes more than 200 photographs, many of which are vintage prints. They speak to each artist's willingness to reject tradition, convention and expectation, while celebrating beauty and the female body. De l'Ecotais says the pairing – the brainchild of Heide's artistic director Lesley Harding – is inspired. Twenty years older than Dupain, the American photographer shared a fascination for depicting beauty, the body and pleasure. 'There's something about beauty and the beauty of women, and the body, that is an ongoing thing for Man Ray,' she says. Dupain, she adds, shared this fascination; the exhibition 'is all about beauty and pleasure'. Both artists were also deliberately provocative, de l'Ecotais says. 'For me, it's really obvious that they are looking to push the limits all the time. Being controversial is really important.' Another Dupain image in the show – Nude 1934 – would have courted similar controversy to that of his pregnant subject, says Harding. 'She's a bride, but she's inverted, so she's a negative,' she says, adding that the photograph is mesmerising. 'The deliberate inversion of time and the way that he's doing what Man Ray liked to do, being disruptive, presenting a woman in a veil with no clothes on ...' Dupain, born in New South Wales in 1911, received his first camera at 13, and, like Man Ray, was swept up in the global movements that upended art in the early 20th century. Both adopted pioneering techniques that helped shift perceptions of photography away from mere documentary record and into the realm of art. De l'Ecotais has made a study of Man Ray's work since she was an intern specialising in photography at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. In 1994, when the gallery received the work that remained in Man Ray's studio after his death in 1976 – some 12,000 negatives and 5000 prints – she was given the task of cataloguing it. Her efforts became the basis for the landmark show Man Ray: Photography Inside Out in 1998. Born Emmanuel Radnitsky in Philadelphia in 1890, Man Ray moved to Paris in 1921 (his Jewish-Russian family changed their name to Ray in 1912 in response to antisemitism in the US). He arrived in Paris at a time when Surrealism and Dadaism were in full swing. His portraits include a who's who of the art world: Andre Breton, Gertrude Stein, Salvador Dali and Virginia Woolf. Marcel Duchamp, one of his closest friends, was an inspiration for Man Ray, who embraced 'an approach [that says] all methods and all mediums are interesting: the point is not the technique, it's what you want to say, what you want to express,' says de l'Ecotais. The same was true for Dupain, who is best known for Sunbaker, the iconic image of a swimmer fresh from the ocean, lying on the sand. Taken in 1937, it came to represent an idealised vision of the sun-bronzed Aussie, and remains Australia's most recognisable image. (Ironically, the subject is actually a Brit, Harold Salvage.) But Dupain's lesser-known early work is remarkable and pioneering, says Harding, co-curator of the current show. She says that, like Man Ray, Dupain played with technique and used innovations such as solarisation and superimposition, as well as cropping, framing and playing with angles and subject matter. 'The idea of them being contemporaries is probably not immediately apparent, but they were both at the peak of their powers in the 1930s,' says Harding. 'They both had this capacity to synthesise things, to take them back to their essential element ... [they saw] this enlightened or more inventive possibility.' Dupain's interest in Man Ray was already evident in 1935 when, aged just 24, he showed insight and maturity in his review of the book Man Ray Photographs 1920-1934 for The Home magazine. Embracing what he learnt about his Paris-based counterpart and other international photographers, the Sydneysider adapted some of their techniques and made them his own, as well as carving out his own approach. 'Man Ray appealed to me because he was radical,' Dupain later told his biographer, Helen Ennis. 'He didn't give a stuff for his contemporaries or his peers … he went ahead and did what he wanted to do.' Clearly, Dupain recognised a kindred spirit. Loading Both artists worked with women who were artists and photographers in their own right: Lee Miller worked with Man Ray in Paris and also became his lover, and Olive Cotton met Dupain at photography school and went on to work with him; the pair later married. Stunning images of and by both women are showcased in the exhibition in a section called 'Collaborators'. Another synergy was that the work of both men featured in fashion magazines, which was often how they made a living. Dupain's photographs, influenced by Hollywood and modernism, appeared in advertisements for David Jones and in several publications, particularly The Home. Man Ray worked for French Vogue from 1924, as well as for Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli, but started developing his reputation through images published in Harper's Bazaar. His photographs of Parisienne women were more about people than fashion, says de l'Ecotais. In the 1930s, his use of solarisation and superimposition made his name. 'It's only a few years of success but it's a big success,' she says. The pairing of their work celebrates not only the impact they had in their lifetimes, but also the legacy of their innovations. '[Both artists'] work feels incredibly fresh, it feels thoughtful and it has this energy about it,' says Harding. De l'Ecotais says the legacy of both artists is ongoing and very significant. 'When you look at these images, they are very modern and contemporary; they haven't aged at all.'
Sydney Morning Herald
6 minutes ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘You're a disgrace': 12-year-old activist leaves corporate boss speechless
FUTURE COUNCIL 81 Minutes In cinemas August 7 Reviewed by Sandra Hall ★★★★ In Future Council, a rather heavy silence falls on the conversation when 12-year-old Skye Neville tells a highly placed Nestle executive that he's a disgrace for defending the company's use of plastic packaging. It takes him a moment to recover but by the end of the exchange, he's admitting big companies such as his can lose sight of their place in 'the wider eco-system'. Skye comes from a Welsh village built on a coastal flood plain, which puts her on climate change's frontline, and she went through a very early conversion to activism, setting up a campaign against plastic use in children's comics and magazines. Now she's on the Future Council – the fiercest of eight teens and sub-teens gathered by Australian documentary maker Damon Gameau, whose career as an activist began with That Sugar Film. A critical look at the effects of sugar on the human body, it made news because he doused himself in sweetness by way of proving his point. He moved on to climate control, taking his 2019 documentary, 2040, into schools, and the kids he met there became the inspiration for Future Council. He found that many knew more about sustainability than most adults. And a thousand of them auditioned for the film, in which the successful candidates cross Europe in a yellow bus meeting fellow activists and do their best to get audiences with the senior executives of some of the world's biggest polluters. To its credit, Nestle was one of the few of these to say yes. Another was multinational Dutch bank ING, whose chief executive seems amused at the start of his interview with the group. His response is friendly but predictably measured. He says the bank has stopped investing in coalmines and stepped away from other clients that aren't divorcing themselves quickly enough from fossil fuels but the rest can't be done overnight. Loading It sounds reasonable but it doesn't quite satisfy young Dutch boy Joaquin Minana, who's leading the charge. Backed up by the others, he asks if ING would consider having young people on its board or at least taken on as advisers. It's an idea that will keep recurring as the bus trip goes on, and by the time we've got to know these kids, it seems like a pretty good idea.
The Age
6 minutes ago
- The Age
‘You're a disgrace': 12-year-old activist leaves corporate boss speechless
FUTURE COUNCIL 81 Minutes In cinemas August 7 Reviewed by Sandra Hall ★★★★ In Future Council, a rather heavy silence falls on the conversation when 12-year-old Skye Neville tells a highly placed Nestle executive that he's a disgrace for defending the company's use of plastic packaging. It takes him a moment to recover but by the end of the exchange, he's admitting big companies such as his can lose sight of their place in 'the wider eco-system'. Skye comes from a Welsh village built on a coastal flood plain, which puts her on climate change's frontline, and she went through a very early conversion to activism, setting up a campaign against plastic use in children's comics and magazines. Now she's on the Future Council – the fiercest of eight teens and sub-teens gathered by Australian documentary maker Damon Gameau, whose career as an activist began with That Sugar Film. A critical look at the effects of sugar on the human body, it made news because he doused himself in sweetness by way of proving his point. He moved on to climate control, taking his 2019 documentary, 2040, into schools, and the kids he met there became the inspiration for Future Council. He found that many knew more about sustainability than most adults. And a thousand of them auditioned for the film, in which the successful candidates cross Europe in a yellow bus meeting fellow activists and do their best to get audiences with the senior executives of some of the world's biggest polluters. To its credit, Nestle was one of the few of these to say yes. Another was multinational Dutch bank ING, whose chief executive seems amused at the start of his interview with the group. His response is friendly but predictably measured. He says the bank has stopped investing in coalmines and stepped away from other clients that aren't divorcing themselves quickly enough from fossil fuels but the rest can't be done overnight. Loading It sounds reasonable but it doesn't quite satisfy young Dutch boy Joaquin Minana, who's leading the charge. Backed up by the others, he asks if ING would consider having young people on its board or at least taken on as advisers. It's an idea that will keep recurring as the bus trip goes on, and by the time we've got to know these kids, it seems like a pretty good idea.
