Exhibition: Shared Sky, NGV Australia at Federation Square

Unknown
active in Australia (1940s)
Mankokkarrng (The Southern Cross) 1948
earth pigments on paper on cardboard
45.5 x 58.5 cm (Image and sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Presented by the Commonwealth Government, 1956

With its infinite nature, changeability and great beauty, the sky is the medium onto which we project our dreams, nightmares and the powerful myths and stories that carry our cultures forward.

It’s a work of art in itself, an eternal, protean installation that is available whenever we wish, engaging our minds as well as our imaginations. It takes us beyond our own world, speaking of other universes, of celestial bodies huger and older and in multitudes far greater than the mind can encompass, as well as the endless possibilities of human striving.

But, while it represents the infinite it has also been instrumental in marking the seasons and guiding the rhythms of daily life, for example the best times to plant or gather certain foods. And it has been vital in guiding navigation and therefore travel for both Indigenous and Western cultures.

Our view of the sky, not to mention our entire planet, is under threat – you only need to think of the obscuring smog during the Beijing Olympics – but even when we see only a haze of smog and cloud a clearer sky exists in our imaginations.

How to interpret such as an all-encompassing influence? How to ‘sing’ it?

Shared Sky, celebrating the International Year of Astronomy, brings together painting, sculpture, photography, prints and drawings to explore varied cultural understandings of the (mainly) night sky over Australia.

All of the works in this exhibition – even those that seek to reproduce ‘objective’ rather than interpretative views of the stars and planets – show us the ways that people from many cultures have sought to know and understand the visible universe, and by so doing to understand themselves and their place in that universe.

Like many works of art today, these pieces confound the boundary between art and nature, confirming that the natural world itself is inherently artistic.

Indigenous peoples are well represented. One of the first things to catch the eye when you enter is an arresting group of Morning Star poles, beautifully decorated structures that feature in the ceremonies of some Yolngu clans. These ceremonies take place a year after the death of a relative to ensure that the diseased reaches Burralku, the land of the dead, located where Venus (the ‘morning star’) rises in the east.

These poles are highly individualised despite their functionality, suggesting the continuing life that the diseased will enjoy. Their feathers, seed pods and brightly coloured pigments all have potent symbolic value – for example, the seedpods are to sustain the diseased while they make their journey.

A myth that features strongly in the exhibition and occurs in various forms across a number of Indigenous cultures is that of the Seven Sisters, based on a group of stars also known as the Pleiades. In Gulumbu Yunupingu’s ‘Gan’yu’, which suggests this myth, small white star shapes and dots have been painted on stringybark in a density that strikingly evokes the richness of the evening sky.

Dennis Nona’s intricately patterned linocut ‘Baidam – shark constellation’ interprets this same star group quite differently, in line with the traditions and culture of Badu Island in the Torres Strait, where he grew up.

For Nona these stars represent the shark, a figure much admired for its hunting skill. In ‘Baidam – shark constellation’ a number of densely packed motifs, many of them curvilinear, surround the figure of the shark, also densely patterned, with floral-like emblems representing the position of the stars as they mark out the shark’s position. Here the disparate elements of sea and sky are united with cultural knowledges.

Like the Indigenous artists, many of the Western artists in the exhibition represent the complexity of the sky in an abstract or semi-abstract fashion. Andrew Browne’s stunning ‘Phenomena’ uses light and contrast to create graceful forms that refer to the artistry of nature.

Offering a completely different mood, Janet Dawson’s lithograph ‘Dream of the sun (Rêve du soleil)’ could have been inspired by Miro, with an exuberance and originality of shape and colour that suggests the ways in which the sun influences our unconscious.

This is an exhibition of intricate treasures. The day I was there I noticed a visitor standing close to and peering at one of the works, Louise Rippert’s ‘Glossary defining time and space’. This is a highly intellectual work that references mandalas as well as the astronomical tables of Copernicus, but its delicate stitchings and textures are irresistible.

It’s equally essential to see Durer’s ‘Celestial map of the southern sky’, first published in 1515. This work drew on contemporary as well as ancient astronomy and was created at a time when astronomers still believed that the Sun moved around the Earth.

The map is a wonderful combination of east and west (it follows the Islamic tradition of showing the constellation from the viewpoint of space rather than Earth) and the scientific and mythic (the map includes mythic figures associated with particular constellations).

Many of the works are in black and white, highlighting the elemental nature of the night sky. Seeming simplicity becomes incredibly profound in ‘Sunrise’, a linocut by Kumanjayi Cherel, of the Gooniyandi clan in the Kimberley.

Here, strong diagonal lines in the centre mark off a radiant rising sun over sloping land, the sun on one side represented by concentric half circles, the earth by a series of diagnonal lines on the other.

Tim Jones’s wood engraving ‘Tree with shooting star’ shows the seemingly disparate elements of nature in unified motion, contrasting but also somehow linking the glowing white of the shooting star with earthbound nature in a treacherous, chaotic mood.

Don’t miss Peter Booth’s comet, or Ludwig Becker's watercolour of the meteor that he witnessed at the Darling River while on the fatal Burke and Wills expedition. He died tragically not long afterwards.

Two series in the exhibition are noteworthy for their reproductions of astral bodies. A group of lithographs derives from Joseph Turner’s highly detailed drawings of the southern nebulae, with the images made visible by the Great Melbourne Telescope.

The Melbourne Telescope, acquired in the late 1860s primarily to advance astronomy for the benefit of Britain, could not photograph deep space, so its images had to be drawn. Turner, with only three and a half hours a night at his disposal, managed to sketch the Nebula Argus and its stars in one month. ‘Nebula Argus’ from the series, produced in 1875, has a quiet, mystical beauty.

Three photographs from the NASA Apollo missions, including one by William Anders that misleadingly showed the Earth appearing to rise over a lunar landscape, evoke the wonder that the early astronauts felt as they observed the Earth from a distance and the Moon from close up.

This is a well-thought out, clearly themed exhibition that succeeds in presenting a huge range of perspectives. After viewing it, you may never see the sky in quite the same way again.

The exhibition runs until 2 August.

Verdict: rich in ideas, historical detail and powerful images

Film review: Camino, directed by Javier Fesser

A sinister Catholic organisation, serious illness and the sweetness of first love: these disparate ingredients make for a potent mix in the exuberant Spanish film Camino.

It’s a shamelessly populist and emotionally manipulative film with a message that only gradually reveals itself. The film’s bitter, angry undertones start off subtly but become strident and even overdone towards the end. If you don’t enjoy sitting in the cinema with tears streaming down your face, it's probably not for you.

The film has garnered a huge slew of awards in Spain, but has fared less well on the international festival circuit. Earlier this year it won six Goyas, Spain’s equivalent of the Oscars, including best film, best director, best original screenplay, best new actress and best lead actress.

Despite its weaknesses Camino is worth watching for the little-known, sinister world it uncovers and the strong performances.

Camino is a pretty, vibrant 11-year-old growing up in a staunchly Catholic household in Madrid. She attends an all-girl Catholic school and has an obsession with the Virgin Mary and a close, loving relationship with her parents, Gloria and Jose.

Almost from the beginning we see her suffering from sudden, unexplained neck pain, but apart from that things seem rosy enough. The family’s Catholicism bonds its members together and Camino’s vitality seems all of a piece with her immersion in the iconography and rituals of Spanish Catholicism. In one scene she dances joyfully around the house, long hair swinging wildly, as she tells the plumber that her mother’s away on a religious retreat.

But the picture soon darkens. We learn that the family, in particular Gloria, are staunch members of the rigidly prescriptive Catholic lay organisation Opus Dei. Camino’s sister, Nuria, is a celibate who lives in an Opus Dei centre and sees little of her family. And Gloria’s calm acceptance of her daughter’s fear of injections, as the search for the source of her pain begins, starts to seem disturbingly sanguine, even heartless.

Meanwhile, Camino’s hormones are going haywire. She attends a drama group and is lovestruck by the cute boy slated to play Prince Charming in the group’s production of Cinderella. With ironic heavy-handedness his name happens to be Jesus (not unusual in a society as influenced by Catholicism as that of Spain): the spiritual and earthy aspects of Camino’s life seem to be coming together beautifully.

But Camino and her pious mother don’t see drama group the same way. And the shadow of illness is creeping over all her dreams of adolescent bliss with her beloved.

As we grow up, we make use of stories – both those we are given and those we search out ourselves – to help us understand our lives and who we are. Camino must find new stories and characters to explain her emerging sexual feelings and these come into conflict with the characters of Catholic lore she’s grown up with.

The film’s cinematography boldly dramatises the conflict. Compelling, brightly coloured fantasy sequences that suggest magical realism as well as sixties bohemia dramatise Camino’s psychic struggles. But they also reveal a fundamental inability of Catholicism, at least as it is practised in Opus Dei, to deal with the complexities of being human.

These scenes contrast with the dolorous, muted colours of the churchy interiors in which Camino lives much of her life.

The film was inspired by the story of a young Spanish girl, Alexia Gonzalez-Barros, who died in 1985 and is in the process of being beatified (a pretext for eventual sainthood).

It suggests that the memory of Alexia, and others like her, has been sullied by the distortions of Opus Dei’s brand of Catholicism. In the film, Opus Dei’s approach leads to a contempt for human feeling and a preoccupation with suffering as a virtue in itself. (The Spanish priest and creator of Opus Dei, Josemaria Escriva, named the foundational text he wrote for the movement Camino, or The Way).

The anger about this takes a while to make itself known, which neatly echoes Camino’s dawning sexuality and urge to individuate.

Opus Dei controls every aspect of the life of Camino’s family. Nuria has no mind of her own but rejoices in becoming ever more obedient to the demands of her ruthless spiritual supervisor, Ines. In one scene she puts tiny stones in her shoes, illustrating the mortification of the flesh that is still openly practised by Opus Dei members.

The film, then, clearly has its own agenda: to ensure Camino’s essential girlishness and indeed humanity are not neatly incised in the interests of religious propaganda.

At first glance, this means that the central dichotomy can seem simplistic – a bohemian sexual utopia set against the iron repression of the church. Such a sanguine view of human sexuality is itself suspect; Freud, for example, insists that sexuality is always the outcome of psychic conflict.

But I think the film’s more sophisticated than that. Ultimately it manages to collapse the dichotomy altogether in the overarching theme of spirituality. Camino is a young girl of extraordinary spiritual power, and ironically she’s inherited this mystical bent from her religious upbringing. It's this spiritual force that enables her to transfer her childish love for the Virgin to an adoration for the more human Jesus.

And it is the strength of this force that makes Camino’s love for Jesus so ennobling even as she becomes sicker – ironically, its very strength leads the Opus Dei elders, so quick to frame everything within the rubric of piety, to mistake it for religious zeal. But where spirituality is concerned, all love is divine.

Nor does the film let secularism off the hook. A sexuality, and indeed a society that is devoid of spirituality may be just as clueless as Opus Dei: the chaos of the drama group’s performance of Cinderella hints at the dangers of an unalloyed secularism. Camino’s rival for the affections of Jesus in the drama group is an empty-headed young girl who struggles to deal with the world outside of her own concerns.

One of the film’s strengths is the affection and respect with which it treats its adolescent characters. They’re full of vitality, even when acting up, amusing to watch in their gawkiness but never figures of derision.

Camino is played by the luminous Nerea Camacho, who is saccharine without being painfully so. Only gradually do we realise that the Disney-like qualities are deliberate – Camino’s seeming purity and childish innocence make her vulnerable to misrepresentation: the church has a fate in store for Camino that her own heart disputes.

Carme Elias is beautifully controlled as Camino’s mother, Gloria, a seemingly warm woman with a view of suffering – not just her own, but that of her loved ones – as a priceless opportunity to increase sanctity. The lengths she will go to to achieve such sanctity are chilling and also help to embed the film in fairy tale.

Mariano Venancio plays Camino’s more indulgent and less religiously zealous father. At times he is called on to be overly sentimental but otherwise acts with perfect emotional tone.

The shots of the operations Camino undergoes are not for the squeamish. It’s difficult not to see the hospital as just another impersonal institution with no real regard for Camino’s individuality. These shots reminded me of the crucifixion of Jesus and subtly suggested a bloodthirstiness at the heart of religiosity that was extremely disturbing.

The soundtrack is awful, with swelling violins at the first hint of pathos – and therefore all too frequently. This is a shame, because there is a kernel of emotional honesty about the film that deserves a more subtle treatment. I was reminded of The Sea Inside, another Spanish drama, which dealt maturely with suffering and the church in a very different context but was also hindered by a soundtrack that tried to tell the audience when to cry.

Camino is a conventionally plotted film with constant action, although it’s overly long and sags towards the end. But it’s worth hanging around for the denouement: in the end Camino’s humanity wins out in a way that is powerfully touching, despite the orchestral overkill.

Verdict: original in tone and subject matter; often intense and engaging

Camino is playing exclusively in Melbourne at the Nova Cinema.