Title
Ceremony
circa 1880
Artist
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Details
- Date
- circa 1880
- Media category
- Drawing
- Materials used
- pen and ink on paper
- Dimensions
- 21.6 x 27.8 cm
- Signature & date
Not signed. Not dated.
- Credit
- Purchased with funds provided by the Aboriginal Art Collection Benefactors and the Gil and Shay Docking Drawing Fund 2023
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 252.2023
- Copyright
- Artist information
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Tommy McRae
Works in the collection
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About
Tommy McRae lived with his family in the upper Murray region of New South Wales/Victoria, on a reserve at Lake Moodemere near Mahgunhah and Corowa. He began drawing late in life, and his drawings, made using readily available commercial ink, pens and sketchbooks, depict aspects of Aboriginal life, the impact of British colonialism, and the incursion of European and Chinese people onto Aboriginal land.
Ceremony c.1880 captures a group of Aboriginal men dancing in rhythm with shields and spears held aloft. The bold rendering of the men’s figures and the graphic repetition of their forms, particularly their legs, evokes the energy of the performance and the strength of cultural activity being referenced.
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Bibliography
Referenced in 1 publication
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Harold Cox, Correspondence Letter to Mr Justice T.C. Davis, Canberra, 08 May 1946, not paginated.
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