Arnhem Land Art is distinguished by lavish decoration a wealth of designs executed with great skill and imagination, and striking color combinations, and for these reasons it has attracted our commercial artists more than the art of any other part of Australia. Painting is the dominant technique, but it is combined with incising on pipes, sculptures and other articles. The designs embrace combinations of stylized representations of ancestral and spiritual beings in human, snake and other forms, natural totemic species, weapons and other objects, featured in fields of innumerable geometric patterns of cross-hatching, parallel lines, and dots in admirable compositions of line and mass. Every minute detail on sacred objects has its special meaning but on Groote Eylandt-and elsewhere the secondary motives are regarded by the natives as being purely decorative infillings.
The art of Arnhem Land is a manifestation of an extremely complex religion and culture, supported by a deep appreciation of artistic expression. Elkin and Berndt (R. & C.) have pointed out that in this region "existence depends on the constant supply of food, and this on the regular increase of natural species, which, in turn, is assured by the great rituals—the Djunggewon, Kunapipi, Ngurlmak and Mara. These, associated with the principal Ancestral Beings, such as Djanggewul, Wauwelak, Laintjung, Banaitja, and Baijini, are the basis of the indigenous religion. Their function, however, is not primarily the provision of food, but the continuation of the human species, the increase of animals, birds, fish, reptiles, insects and plants being an adjunct to the main theme. Further, the religious cults are concerned with the rhythmic sequence of birth and rebirth of all living things, and with the regular succession of the seasons. Their basic theme; therefore, is crystallized in the concept of a Fertility Mother. In keeping with this, stress is placed on 'procreative ideology '. Herein lays the inspiration of most Arnhem Land art, the doctrines of which it is one of the means of expression".
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