Macassan Prau: A Telling Of Macassan Contact Through Australian First Peoples Art
by Bryce Flaskas
Photo taken by Bryce Flaskas, 2020.
Mandiga Lalara’s painting, “Macassan Prau” (Fig. 1.) is a rendering positioned within a lineage of similar historic portrayals by other Australian First Peoples1, of Macassan fishermen who have sailed from the port of Sulawesi (In modern day Indonesia) in search of trepang on Australian shores for approximately four centuries and possibly even earlier. This essay will expound upon the historic depths the painting offers while simultaneously arguing a perspective that is contrary to the standard telling of the colonial timeline.by Bryce Flaskas
To begin, it’s important to address the historic foundations of the image, in order to grasp the purposeful compositional decisions, as well as to appreciate how the trans-cultural exchange between the Macassan people and First Nation Australians have pervaded through time. Macassan fishermen had already established a complex relationship with the local Aboriginal communities of Arnhem Land long before the arrival of Captain James Cook2. Although the nature of the relationship is still highly debated3, one can speculate according to the large degree of participation in (and in some cases complete adoption of) each culture's way of life that it was one of mutual respect and abundant economic exchange4.
Macassan trade was intensive and introduced a broad material culture to the Australian Aboriginal people at the time5. Though perhaps most distinctly, the Indonesian travellers brought metals which transformed the life of Aboriginal communities situated in Arnhem Land6, allowing material enhancements such as large wooden dugout canoes, complex sculptural creations and more durable hunting equipment7. Ethnohistoric records provide evidence that the rigorous material exposure presented by Macassan people greatly increased the effectiveness of hunting practices at large and particularly marine hunting for the Aboriginal coastal communities8. Prior to these innovations, it’s understood that oceanic cuisine such as turtle and dugong were less common in the diet of these peoples9.
Early European settlers when arriving in Australia, provide various accounts on the eminence of turtle meat10, as a delicacy to Australian First Peoples and furthermore the commodification of the turtle shell within both Macassan and First Nation communities around Australia11.
Returning to “Macassan Prau”, we can see that the passenger on the far right appears to be facing over the deck, perhaps attentively keeping watch for any unsuspecting prey. Though, on closer inspection there’s no apparent depiction of hunting tools or hostility of any kind. Therefore, reading the painting as a hunting scene relies too heavily on historic associations and overlooks the wisdom of the artist as sovereign storyteller.
Despite this, it is immediately understood, by looking at the painting, that the turtle in some way plays a paramount compositional role in the painting and given the information provided, it makes sense that Lalara chose the emblematic silhouette of a turtle to serve as mascot for the Maccassan voyage.
Huge in proportion to the other passengers (who are assumed to be Macassan fisherman) and furthermore positioned centrally, the turtle is obviously not just an afterthought of the artist. Sitting within the pictorial plane as indifferent to the solidity and structure of the vessel, the turtle serves as an intersection between a representational and spiritual reality.
Although the painting depicts what is now understood as a real cultural process, for me the work is most prominently framed through an ethereality which pervades historic fixtures. Though it’s important to note that the word ‘ethereal’ - for lack of a better term - as used in the previous sentence, is an unsatisfactory descriptor of Lalara’s work, as the westernised dialect imposes a reality that is beyond, or transcendent from an embodied way of being in the world. This ethereal perspective may have very well constituted the artist's natural way of perceiving the world and not adjacent or separated from it. This theory is poetically transcribed through the central totemic image of a turtle illuminating the prau from within.
Lalara has used traditional natural pigments; ochre, black, white and brown tones, to paint a representation of a Macassan prau sailing against what appears to be a pitch black emptiness. Rather than a direct depiction of night, it’s interesting to note that the artist has distinctly suspended the scene, to evoke a feeling of shifting consciousness, remembrance or an altered state such as dreaming, thus illustrating the timeless venture of the Macassan voyage. Unfounded in an apparent time or place, the void-like nature of the background emphasises a quietude. In contrast, the white paint of the turtle remains bold, existing as the ground of its own being and not after any pre-existing form, communicating an innate self-reliance and wholeness.
To conclude, Mandiga Lalara has effervescently captured an eternal voyage. Anthropological and ethnohistoric remnants have extensively proven the impact of this trans-cultural relationship between the Macassan and First Nation Australian peoples, but artists such as Lalara have poetically transcribed what lives eternally within the hearts and minds of those who’ve experienced it first hand and furthermore, constructed gateways in which to enter the shared roots of this kinship - as we have found through the course of this short essay in the motif of a turtle.
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