Beyond Borders | Lin Onus’s Serendipities
Art & Collectors
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In 1989, Lin Onus met master printmaker Shaike Snir at Port Jackson Press Australia, then the country’s oldest printmaking studio. Over the following years the two artists built an intimate report, spending their lunch breaks experimenting at boundaries of printmaking until Onus’s untimely death in 1996. He left these works in his wake – a series of museum quality works, each unique and imbued with its own powerful presence.
For collectors of Lin Onus and Aboriginal art, these works are something special – emblems of a legacy steeped in collaboration, experimentation and reconciliation.
In 1989, Lin Onus met master printmaker Shaike Snir at Port Jackson Press Australia, then the country’s oldest printmaking studio. Over the following years the two artists built an intimate report, spending their lunch breaks experimenting at boundaries of printmaking until Onus’s untimely death in 1996. He left these works in his wake – a series of unique works on paper, each imbued with a powerful presence with some reaching across generations, finding completion at the hands of Onus’s son, Tiriki Onus.
The artist as an individual genius was a myth that never resonated with Lin Onus. Of Yorta Yorta and Scottish descent, he denied our urge to categorise and simplify, producing art that moved across mediums to merge Western and Aboriginal iconography. In works like ‘Blue Leaves with Frogs’, we are faced with three perspectives – a creek dotted with frogs, a canopy of trees and scattering of blue leaves – a visual reminder that the landscape is neither monolithic nor resolved.
Among the tranquil river scenes lies ‘In Memory of Our Ancestors Who Were Shot and Killed Here’. Of profound cultural significance, this work tells the story of the 1915 Mistake Creek Massacre wherein 32 Aboriginal people were murdered for the invented crime of stealing a cow. While Onus would typically build his prints upon a black ground, symbolic of his Aboriginal identity, here he presents the creek against white, the absence of black achingly poignant.
Each work in this series has excellent provenance and is one-of-a-kind, with many of their companion works in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Australia. For collectors of Onus and Aboriginal art, these works are something special – emblems of cross-generational collaboration, experimentation and Onus’s legacy, a “bridge between cultures, technology and ideas”.
Cross-Generational ‘Reflection Experimental’
‘Reflection Experimental’ is a one-of-a-kind screenprint, the fruit of a collaboration between Onus, his son Tiriki Onus and master printmaker Shaike Snir. Onus met Snir at Port Jackson Press Australia in 1989 and they soon built an artistic rapport, spending their lunch breaks experimenting with printmaking techniques until Onus’s untimely passing in 1996. ‘Reflection Experimental’ was thus begun by Onus and completed by his son in 2002, who also signed the work.
‘In Memory of Our Ancestors Who Were Shot and Burnt Here’
To grasp the significance of this work, we must look to a dark event in Australian history: the Mistake Creek Massacre in 1915. After wrongly accusing an Aboriginal person of stealing a cow, it is believed that two White men attacked a camp of Gija people in Alice Springs, killing and burning the bodies of up to 32 people. After all blood was shed, the cow turned up. At the massacre’s site stands a plaque inscribed with ‘In Memory of Our Ancestors Who Were Shot and Burnt Here’, echoed by Onus.
‘Green and Red Pattern with Frog Pattern’
While Lin Onus was known for traversing the border between figurative and abstract, he was rarely as abstract as is here. Across a black ground, symbolic of his cultural Aboriginal identity, he runs an intricate lattice of green dots and red veins. Clusters of pattern evoke the silhouettes of frogs, his totem animal. What can be recognised in these patterns, what associations are drawn? Like ripples, the frogs in this work are traces, a reminder that all things leave an imprint.
