Burndud: Alice Guiness
Solo exhibition in association with Juluwarlu Art Group
Burndud is a celebration of Alice’s love of culture and painting. When Alice sits down to paint her special Burndud paintings, she smooths the canvas before her. She takes her brush, considers the colours in their pots, reaches out, dips the brush into a colour and quietly paints a circle using her left hand, which is called Jambularri in the Yindjibarndi language. One circle and then another. Her focus is calm, one circle and another. She will not be interrupted.
The Burndud Ground that Alice paints has multiple meanings for Yindjibarndi people. The Burndud is a significant site on Yindjibarndi Ngurra, connected to the Ngurra Nyujuggamu –the time when the world was soft. It is also the sacred law that Yindjibarndi people have passed down through generations for more than 60,000 years. Alice continues to live by this meaning and purpose.
All across our Yindjibarndi Ngurra, there are places marked by songs and stories made by the Marrga. The Marrga are our Creation spirits, and these songs are given to them by Mingkala, our Sky God. The Marrga sang the sacred Law that we call the Burndud. Every summer, in the Birdirra Law Ceremonies, our young men are chosen by their parents to take the sacred journey from boyhood to manhood. At this time, they will be given the knowledge and responsibilities to carry forward the traditions of songs and wisdom, to see beyond what was once withheld to those without passage. Alice places a high value on all things equal by the way it makes her feel, and this can be seen throughout her work.
Alice expresses her deep joy and positivity by painting the Burndud, mirroring the ceremony she dances every year at law ground in a circular continuous motion until the boys have returned from the first part of initiation. Her use of bold colour and vibrating patterns embody the rhythms and movement of the women dancing and the men singing.
Alice’s storytelling through her paintings is a contemporary form of oral history, a personal story told using canvas and colours, memories of the past, and a projection of the future.
