untitled walam-wunga.galang (grindstones) 2019 / 2021
sandstone, stone, 5.1 surround sound
duration 6 minutes 30 seconds
Courtesy the artist and Dr Uncle Stan Grant Snr AM
Uncle Stan Grant Snr speaks in his Wiradjuri language, vocalising a silenced story of the traditional ways of his people. Uncle Stan reminds us that we must listen to our Elders and respect the knowledge they hold, working together to return Country to health and abundance.
“nindi-nhi bagaray-bang nguram-bang maying-galang-girri-gu –
we want healthy Country for future generations.”
Australia’s 350+ diverse Indigenous languages encode our relationship to Country and complex cultural knowledge. Our languages are central to our wellbeing and identity, and while Indigenous languages have greatly suffered as a result of colonisation, many Indigenous communities across Australia are working to protect and reinvigorate their mother tongue.
Jonathan Jones
Wiradjuri / Kamilaroi
born Sydney 1978; lives and works Sydney
A member of the Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi nations of south-east Australia, Jonathan Jones is an artist, curator and researcher. As an artist he works across a range of mediums, from printmaking and drawing to sculpture and film, to create site-specific installations and interventions that engage Aboriginal practices, relationships and knowledge. Jones's work champions local knowledge systems, is grounded in research of the historical archive and builds on community aspirations. At the heart of his practice is the act of collaborating and many projects have seen him work with other artists and communities, including with Dr Uncle Stan Grant Senior. Jones has exhibited both nationally and internationally, and his work has been collected by state, national and international institutions.
Dr Uncle Stan Grant Snr AM
Wiradjuri
Born Dubbo 1940; lives and works Narrandera, New South Wales
Dr Uncle Stan Grant Snr, who is based in Narrandera, is recognised as the senior expert in the Wiradjuri language and a champion of language revival. He learnt to speak Wiradjuri from his grandfather and has spent most of his life reviving and teaching the language. Uncle Stan’s work has been recognised with a Deadly Award, an Order of Australia and an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by Charles Sturt University.
sound designers: Luke Mynott and Julian Wessels, Unison Sound, Sydney
untitled walam-wunga.galang (grindstones) is a collaborative work with Uncle Stan Grant. It's a work that celebrates a southeast cultural practice of collecting seeds, grinding them down and making bread. This is a practice that’s been happening for countless generations in this region. In fact in central New South Wales a grindstone was found at 32000 years old, making us some of the world's oldest bread makers. But like most Aboriginal stories, that's not part of Australia's history. So, in many ways this project is about bringing those stories to light. Making these oversized grindstones to celebrate these big stories - these stories that are about our history.
The works themselves and made from Sandstone from the southeast, that have been slowly ground down. And that process of grinding stone, of shaping stone with stone, is about that enduring presence that we have. That slowly moving stone overstone, that connection we have that goes back for eons.
The soundscape is a collaboration with Uncle Stan. We can hear him speaking to us in Wiradjuri - telling us about how to be connected to Country and if we care for Country, it will care for us. Statements like “ngangaanhi ngurambang wiinydhuradhu” is “we care for Country with fire”. And he's talking about that process,that age old process of burning back country. That not only encourages new growth, it's also about encouraging those grasses to come back and seed, to provide us with that feed again.
The work is thinking about a statement that Uncle Bruce has worked a lot with in his book, about Captain Sturt who was lost out at Coopers Creek. That he comes across a camp of Blackfellas who end up saving him and his men. And at night as he's been fed with roasted duck and cake, he sits in a house and he listens to the women of the camps grinding seeds, and he says that the sound they make is like a loom factory. And so in that moment we get a sense of how important these objects were in this region. How people were using these grindstones to feed their families, to feed our nations. And yet those stones have gone quiet. So in so many ways this project is about waking those stones up to tell these stories again to feed not only our bellies but our imagination.
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