In The Gap

Chris Raja, Alice Springs, 2012

Driving through The Gap is something I take for granted, but not so long ago people couldn’t just walk into Alice Springs uninvited. They had to sit down at certain boundaries, like The Gap, and ask an Arrernte custodian’s permission to enter – and sometimes they weren’t welcome. Today I might travel through The Gap six times a week. Everything’s changed. With this in mind, I approached my task of contributing to ‘Art of the Nomads’ with trepidation.

I immediately considered including the work of Rupert Betheras, Sia Cox and Rod Moss, all of whose work I was intimately familiar with. Like the work of these artists, I feel closely connected to the idea of being a ‘Territory Nomad.’ But I wanted to understand it more. Consulting a dictionary, I discovered the term ‘nomad’ comes from the Greek nomas from nemo, to pasture, an ironic concept in the middle of the desert, but one that suggested a kind of nourishing, rejuvenating quest.

It made me re-evaluate my idea of what a nomad was, and is. Growing up in Calcutta, I’d thought of nomads as being Aboriginals, Mongolians and some tribal Indians. I thought these people were true nomads as they roamed seeking seasonal foods and fresh water. Since settling in the Alice, the definition of this word ‘nomad’, keeps altering. There are ‘grey’ nomads, trans-national nomads – and artistic ones.

When I first came to the central desert, it struck me how many Australian colloquialisms describe places ‘beyond the beyond’ – beyond the black stump, the never never, the outback, walkabout…they’ve all got associations with a lack of belonging. The nationalistic, tribalistic idea of ‘our country’ surely isn’t a nomadic idea!

The more I moved around the country, the more I thought about the meaning of the word. Leaving, then returning, to a place forces one to see it more clearly. A simple act of movement, like walking, helps form the raw material of our intelligence. The history of nomadism can be traced back to the first Homo sapiens leaving Africa, even if most societies, having started out nomadic, ended up sedentary. As a general rule, Bruce Chatwin writes in Songlines, migratory species are less aggressive than sedentary ones because the migration is a leveller. The journey dissolves the need for hierarchies and displays of dominance (even the fearsome Khanates of Central Asia exercised a kind of democracy, with regular assemblies which decided matters of law, war and peace).

On Mohammed Street, some African and Indian men are playing badminton. Across the road at the Gap Youth Centre, Arrernte boys mill about. Someone’s playing drums as a mob of desert dwellers wander past, talking animatedly. A woman shouts something in a language I don’t know. This is a place of drunks and criminals, adventurers and missionaries, misfits and artists. It’s a place where you can slide into eternity or obscurity, or both. As always, amongst the mad, the dispossessed and the spiritual alcoholics, are the artists.

Cutting into the narrow Gap is the Todd River, a dry sandy river bed lined with tall eucalypts. The ranges loom all over this place, a constant reminder of time’s incomprehensible dimension. While walking ‘round The Gap, along the river, I was surprised to discover that, I too, am a nomad. I’ve travelled a long way, seeking new adventures in different lands.

The desert and its inhabitants fascinate me, as they have other artists and writers: from Sydney Nolan and John Olsen to Xavier Herbert, Robin Davidson and many others from Australia and around the world. And now, Sia Cox, Rupert Betheras and Rod Moss.

Sia Cox makes a striking impression with her fabric sculptures. Her sculptures are portraits of people she knows; people who make an impression on her with their personalities.

Rupert Betheras an intuitive artist, evoking wide-ranging interests and life-experiences. I feel his paintings almost act like a diary, but in this diary he isn’t simply telling you what he is doing or where he has been. Certainly, the places he visits and the people he meets invariably end up influencing his work.

Rob Moss’s paintings grapple with big questions about identity, friendship, place and belonging. His work depicts the centre of Australia in a unique way. He paints his Aboriginal friends in various scenes and guises.

What all these artists have in common is a Western visual aesthetic that informs their depiction of this timeless land and its ancient people. They are all brave, curious and complicated.

List of Works

Rupert Betheras, Australian line of spiritual salvation, 2011, oil and enamel on linen

Sia Cox, Resting, 2012, mixed media

Sia Cox, Love at the Gap View Hotel, 2012, mixed media

Rod Moss, Big Rooster, 1992, synthetic polymer & graphite on dessin canson paper