Big John Dodo
John Dodo Nangkiriny (c. 1910 – 2003), better known as Big John Dodo, was an Indigenous Australian artist known for his sculptures and carvings of human heads. He was a leader of the Karajarri people of the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
Biography
Dodo was born in about 1910 at Yilila, a locality near the Bohemia Downs Station around 32 kilometres (20 mi) of Bidyadanga Community, Western Australia.[1] He was known as a skilled stockman and worked on various cattle stations in the Kimberley.[2] His work included "branding, fencing, maintaining water supplies and droving cattle to Meekatharra in a trip on horseback that could take 12 to 16 weeks".[3] Dodo spent decades living at Anna Plains Station but he and his wife Rosie Munroe were evicted in the 1960s when Anna Plains was sold to new owners. They lived on another station for around 18 months before moving to the La Grange mission at Bidyadanga,[3] where Dodo lived until his death in 2003.[4]
Dodo was a fully initiated member of the Karajarri people whose traditional lands lie around Lagrange Bay in the West Kimberley.[4] However, he was initiated at Yawinya, located within Anna Plains Station on the traditional lands of the Nyangumarta.[3] After settling at Bidyadanga, Dodo played a key role in maintaining a distinct cultural identity for the Karajarri following the state government's forcible resettlement of Mangarla and Nyigina people from the Great Sandy Desert at the La Grange mission.[5] In 1995, he initiated a native title claim over the Karajarri's traditional lands, which was granted in 2002 in the name of "John Dudu Nangkiriny and Others on behalf of the Karajarri People".[6]
Artwork
According to Dodo, he produced his first head in about 1938 or 1939 when he was working at Anna Plains, carving a man's face out of mud with a pocket knife. His work attracted the attention of visiting anthropologist Helmut Petri.[7] Dodo resumed his carvings in the 1960s after settling at Bidyadanga.
Dodo's works are held by the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, the Berndt Museum of Anthropology in Perth, and the Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute in Adelaide. His heads [8]
In about 1984, Dodo's works came to the attention of British businessman Lord McAlpine, a tourism promoter in Broome. McAlpine commissioned 100 heads from Dodo at $1,000 per head.[9]
Dodo's work initiated what John Mateer has described as an "almost unknown minor art movement [...] now poorly known even among historians of Indigenous art"., with other Karajarri people – including Ian Gilbert, Matthew Gilbert, Teddy Hunter and Darcey Hunter – also producing human head sculptures.[10]
References
- ^ McKelson 2000, p. 575.
- ^ Croft, Brenda; Jenkins, Susan (2003). "Representing the figurative". Tactility: two centuries of objects, textiles and fibre. National Gallery of Australia: 12–17.
- ^ a b c Jorgensen 2019, p. 82.
- ^ a b Jorgensen 2019, p. 77.
- ^ Jorgensen 2019, p. 80.
- ^ Jorgensen 2019, p. 79.
- ^ Jorgensen 2019, pp. 83–84.
- ^ Jorgensen 2019, p. 89.
- ^ Jorgensen 2019, p. 86.
- ^ Mateer 2017, pp. 37–38.
Sources
- Jorgensen, Darren (2019). "Big John Dodo and Karajarri histories" (PDF). Aboriginal History. 43. ANU Press: 77–92. doi:10.22459/AH.43.2019.04.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link) - Mateer, John (2017). "Invisible Genres, or on the Virtual and the Actual" (PDF). Westerly. 62 (2): 23–48.
- McKelson, Kevin (2000). "Dodo, 'Big' John". In Neale, Sylvia; Neale, Margo (eds.). The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture. Oxford University Press. pp. 575–576. ISBN 9780195506495.