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THE ART OF BUTCHER JOE NANGAN
Visual Records of West Kimberley Oral Traditions
Butcher Joe Nangan was born at Kanen (Fisherman's
Bend), Broome, Western Australia. His own country,
Jirkalli, with its springs and creeks, lies between
Roebuck Bay and the lower reaches of the Fitzroy
River, and surrounds the Edgar Ranges. This part
of the Nyikina country abutted with that of the
Yawuru and Karajarri to the west, and that of
the Mangala of the Great Sandy Desert, to the
south. Being born in Yawuru country affiliated
Joe with his western and southern neighbours and
it was in the cultural milieu of these groups
that he found his creative inspiration.
Joe received his nickname in the 1930s when he
was employed in the Beagle Bay Mission butcher
shop. As German anthropologist Helmut Petri noted,
Joe had a 'rather "dreaming" approach
to human existence'. This focus on the esoteric
and spiritual aspects had always been part of
Nangan's nature and even as a young man he had
regularly experienced spirit visitations in the
course of his dreams. In the mid-1920s, during
one such visitation, the spirit of his dead 'aunt'
Kintimayi emerged from her grave at Wayikurrkurr
on Dampier Downs. The spirit bestowed the Pelican
Being, Mayata, upon Joe as a personal jalnga
or spirit familiar and taught him the marinji-rinji
nulu, a dance depicting the transformational
processes by which spirits of the dead may reveal
themselves and communicate benevolently with the
living. Joe last performed the Mataya nulu,
with its distinctive thread-cross headdress in
1985.
Joe was noted for his skilful engraving of boab
nuts and pearlshell and his work was collected
sporadically by both locals and tourists interested
in Aboriginal culture, particularly as it related
to the Broom region with its romantic pearling
history. Less well known however were his brilliantly
executed pencil and watercolour pictures of flora
and fauna, spirit beings, and ancestral and historical
events These works, executed in a distinctive,
naturalistic style illustrate Joe's knowledge
of the complex narratives of the region. The drawings
first appeared in the mid-1950s.
Collections of Nangan's drawings and paintings
were made by Helmut Petri (in 1963), Peter Dalton
(mid-1960s) and Nora Kerr (1968). Musicologist
Alice Moyle also recorded songs relating to the
images collected by Kerr. Generally, however,
public interest was focused on the beautifully
engraved boab nuts and pealshells, these objects
being deemed to reflect a more traditional Aboriginal
content than Nangan's works on paper.
In 1974, the West Australian author, Hugh Edwards,
worked with Joe recording a series of stories.
Together in 1976 they produced Joe Nangan's
Dreaming presenting 20 legends and illustrated
by Joe. As Edwards notes in his introduction the
written word does not do justice to the narrative
as originally presented by Joe. A fluent and careful
speaker of English, he would break a story to
refine a concept in Nyikina before rephrasing
it in English for the recorder.
Art dealer and entrepreneur, Mary Macha, recognising
the importance of Joe's work, regularly commissioned
books of drawings from him. Between them, over
a fifteen-year period, a relationship sprung up
that saw Joe produce more than 500 drawings, complete
with associated songs and narratives.
Butcher Joe demonstrated remarkable skill in
his use of both pencil, when drawing, or penknife,
when engraving, to delineate living forms, human
and animal with the full appreciation of anatomy
and perspective. His figures were mobile, rarely
static, and the emotions and tensions displayed
by subjects succinctly reflected the tones of
the themes he sought to depict. Ancillary features,
such as rocks and trees, were also drawn in a
way that gave them a sense of individual character,
a timeless awareness, which indeed was as how
he perceived them.
Butcher Joe Nangan, little recognised as one
of Australia's most prolific Indigenous artists
died where he was born, in Broome in January 1989.
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