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Aboriginal Art Facts & Worksheets

Aboriginal Art is the spiritual and symbolic art practiced by the Aboriginal peoples of Australia.

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Unknown to the Aboriginal people, who lived 80,000 years ago, they started the oldest form of artistic expression in the world. Aboriginal art is the spiritual and symbolic art practiced by Aboriginal peoples of Australia. 

See the fact file below for more information on Aboriginal art, or you can download our 28-page Aboriginal art worksheet pack to utilize within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

HISTORY

  • The first Aboriginal paintings, mostly depicting the desert landscape, were discovered in the 1930s.
  • A famous watercolor painter named Albert Namatjira was featured in the first-ever exhibition of Aboriginal art in Adelaide, Australia in 1937.
  • Geoffrey Bardon, a teacher who worked with Aboriginal children in a small community northwest of Alice Springs, observed Aboriginal men record stories in the sand in 1971. Bardon encouraged these men to paint the legends on canvases and boards, and because of this, the genre was born.
  • For Aboriginal artists, the idea of painting using Western mediums was a new endeavor.
  • It is important to note that each piece depicts a unique story based on the artist’s journey, with some focused on their upbringing, encounters with war, daily habits, and other notable points of view. This results in the need to ask permission to depict particular stories, especially stories not passed down through their own families.

DREAMTIME

  • The heart of Aboriginal culture is known as Dreamtime, often referred to as Jukurrpa or Tingari in the Western desert region of the country.
  • It is the period wherein the Aboriginals believed that the world was created, and upon which most symbolism in Aboriginal art focuses.
  • Dreamtime art varies greatly depending upon unique interpretations from different areas.
  • The focus of Dreamtime art is the ancestors who traveled the land and created important sites in the landscapes.
  • The symbols of Dreamtime events were traditionally created on cave walls, carved into timber or stone, on the desert floor, and, with the use of body paints, on the bodies of Aboriginal people.
  • Symbols were also painted onto the bodies of dancers who performed the stories in ceremonies. These symbols strengthened the associations between the people and the timeless stories of the creation of the lands they own.

ART FORMS AND COLORS

  • There are several forms of Aboriginal art, with certain artists relying heavily on specific colors, and often those palettes help to place the artwork in the community to which it belongs.
  • For example, artwork with soft, earth-tone colors is often seen in the Papunya Tula region, while the Western Desert communities use strong, vibrant pigments instead.
  • Most desert communities can be identified easily due to their strong primary colors, while other communities often use more muted styles.
  • Ochre or natural pigments were traditionally used in Aboriginal art due to the availability of the material. The pigments were then used to produce colors such as white, yellow, red, and black from charcoal. 
  • Colors such as smokey greys, sage greens, and saltbush mauves were soon added.
  • With these readily available materials, such as mud and plants, the Aboriginals could create colorful paintings.
  • The red ochre of traditional Aboriginal art signifies blood; yellow ochre signifies sand or sunlight; and white paint signifies water. However, modern artists today may use a wide variety of colors.

ART SYMBOLS

  • Aboriginal art’s use of symbols relies on context. Unlike hieroglyphics, the symbol placements in Aboriginal art do not create a specific meaning every time, resulting in the need for an explanatory guide to these symbols.
  • Although symbols may vary widely among the various Aboriginal cultures found all over Australia, there are still many useful starting points that can help with identifying their potential meaning.
  • The Aboriginals often use a simple set of symbols, such as dots, concentric circles, and curved and straight lines.
  • To depict humans, the Aboriginals often use the U shape, representing the ground when a person sits cross-legged on the earth.
  • Although the symbols for a male, female, child, community, family, etc., are standard, they can still have different interpretations according to the artist. Sometimes, colors represent certain aspects of the story.
  • The tools besides the U shape in the painting can often help identify whether the human is a male or female. A woman in the painting may have a coolamon bowl and a digging stick right next to her. This combination of symbols may look like this: UOI. A man may appear to carry spears and boomerangs, the possible symbol for which may look like this: U || (. Lastly, a group of people is generally marked as a circle or a set of concentric circles.
  • Campsites or rock holes are often represented in concentric circles. The routes traveled between camps or places are illustrated with straight lines between circles, and water or rain is described with the use of wavy lines across the painting.
  • Tracks typically represent animals in Aboriginal art. One example is an emu that leaves a three-pointed V track as its footprints. An echidna is depicted by a series of parallel lines, while reptiles are usually shown as how one would see them from above.
  • Black dot patterns frequently symbolize stars, ancestral desert tracks, and/or body parts, while lines symbolize waterfalls, rivers, or landscapes.
  • Contemporary Aboriginal art collectors will have a better understanding of the artwork through the information provided by living artists.
  • Excavated Aboriginal art from caves and rock formations is often left to be interpreted by art historians and scholars rather than contemporary collectors.

CIRCLES IN ABORIGINAL ART

  • In Aboriginal art, one of the most common symbols used is a circle, representing cosmological aspects of cultural and spiritual places. Forms of sacredness and expressions of connections to cultural representations within the mind, body, and emotions indicate circular impressions left on rock surfaces.
  • The multiple layering of specified symbols often provides protection of sacred knowledge.

TRADITIONAL ABORIGINAL ART

  • The oldest known form of indigenous art is rock art.
  • A charcoal drawing on a fragment is the earliest known rock painting. It can be found in Southwestern Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia and dates back 28,000 years.
  • Hand-stenciling is one of the methods used in Aboriginal rock art.
  • The artist mixes the ochre, water, and animal fat in their mouth and blows the mixture across their hand resting on the rock’s surface.
  • It is said that the higher the stencil is placed on a rock, the more influential the person is considered.
  • Bradshaw art, one of the oldest figurative works of art in the world, is also one of the more controversial forms of Aboriginal art. Many believed that the figures in the artwork were created before their arrival and were copied by the indigenous people that inhabited the land after.
  • The X-ray art used by the people of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia is traditional and naturalistic in style. The paintings most likely depict the artist’s relationship with the animals, the land, and its inhabitants.
  • Known as one of the most potent Creation Spirits to the Mowanjum people of the Kimberley region, Wandjina is associated with the rain and regeneration of land and all natural resources. Thus, Wandjina art was born.
  • Paintings of Wandjina can be found in caves and on rocks in the Kimberley region. Due to their unique characteristics that represent climatic features, the paintings can easily be noticed.

MODERN ABORIGINAL ART PRACTICES

  • Often referred to as Rarrk, cross-hatching is a painting style in Arnhem Land, Northern Australia.
  • Contemporary cross-hatching is achieved on a canvas using acrylic paint, while initially, it was painted on dried or cured bark.
  • Thousands of years prior, the Aboriginal people used to outline their designs with circles and dots in the sand. When Aboriginal art became popular in Western culture, the style was transferred onto the canvas at Papunya Tula School of Painters.
  • The Aboriginals used double-dotted imagery to disguise the sacred designs and meanings to ensure that they were only distinguishable to their people due to the fear that non-indigenous people and other rival regions would understand their secret knowledge.

Aboriginal Art Worksheets

This is a fantastic bundle that includes everything you need to know about Aboriginal Art across 28 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use worksheets that are perfect for teaching kids about Aboriginal Art, which is the spiritual and symbolic art practiced by Aboriginal peoples of Australia. 

Complete List of Included Worksheets

Below is a list of all the worksheets included in this document.

  1. Aboriginal Art Facts 
  2. Unscramble the Scrambled
  3. Compare to Be Aware
  4. Name Your Type
  5. Dip and Dot
  6. Matching Symbols
  7. Which Is Which?
  8. Make It, Own It!
  9. Decipher the Cipher
  10. Design with Signs
  11. Stay Original with Aboriginal

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Aboriginal art mostly about?

Drawing on the Dreamtime is a sacred concept for Aboriginal people that symbolizes their creation stories and spiritual beliefs. Artisans have crafted beautiful paintings of natural colors, dots, and swirling designs around this concept. The oldest form of Indigenous Australian artwork is these symbols and patterns found in various forms throughout history.

Who invented Aboriginal art?

Over 80,000 years ago, Aboriginal people started the world’s oldest form of artistic expression. They used ochres to paint on rocks, bark, ceremonial articles, dirt, sand, and even their bodies.

Why is art so important to Aboriginals?

Indigenous visual arts are a way for people to express their culture. They help to keep culture alive and passed down. They also help people to be healthy and happy. The visual arts improve Indigenous women’s lives and give young Indigenous people confidence.

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Link will appear as Aboriginal Art Facts & Worksheets: https://kidskonnect.com - KidsKonnect, October 18, 2022

Use With Any Curriculum

These worksheets have been specifically designed for use with any international curriculum. You can use these worksheets as-is, or edit them using Google Slides to make them more specific to your own student ability levels and curriculum standards.

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