Emu Dreaming at Mt. King

Label

“I always paint my mother’s country and my father’s country. I don’t paint other people’s country. The emu is one of my Dreamings. That emu place is a dangerous Dreaming place, which people should not touch. When we die, the country speaks, the emu cries from up on top. . . . Maybe when I die the Dreaming will cry for me.”—Paddy Bedford

The narrow gorge and hills depicted in this painting memorialize a tragedy for the Gija people. In the 1920s a white station manager massacred Bedford’s relatives using strychnine poisoning. Bedford documents this historical event using the Emu Dreaming, a creation story where the Emu separated day from night. But the layers of Dreaming and painful history intertwine, joining with the land and its people to define this place.

From the 2023 exhibition Layered Histories: Indigenous Australian Art from the Kimberley and Central Desert, curated by Amelia Kahl, Barbara C. & Harvey P. Hood 1918 Curator of Academic Programming

Course History

WRIT 5, Indigenous Knowledge and Development, Kenneth Bauer, Winter 2013

ARTH 16, ANTH 50, Australian Aborigional Art, Howard Morphy, Fall 2012

ARTH 16, ANTH 50, Australian Aborigional Art, Howard Morphy, Fall 2012

ARTH 16, ANTH 50, Australian Aborigional Art, Howard Morphy, Fall 2012

ARTH 16, ANTH 50, Australian Aborigional Art, Howard Morphy, Fall 2012

WRIT 5, Nature and Imagination: The Meanings of Place, William Nichols, Fall 2012

SART 29, Photography I, Brian Miller, Fall 2012

SART 30, Photography II, Brian Miller, Fall 2012

SART 25, Painting I, Esme Thompson, Fall 2012

SART 25, Painting I, Enrico Riley, Fall 2012

ANTH 30, Hunters and Gatherers, Nathaniel Dominy, Fall 2012

THEA 28, Dance Composition, Ford Evans, Fall 2012

SART 15, Drawing I, Gerald Auten, Fall 2012

SART 20, SART 71, Drawing II, Drawing III, Colleen Randall, Fall 2012

NAS 42, Gender Issues in Native American Life, Vera Palmer, Fall 2012

ARTH 16, ANTH 50.4, Indigenous Australian Art and the Politics of Curation, Stephen Gilchrist, Winter 2012

ARTH 16, ANTH 50.4, Indigenous Australian Art and the Politics of Curation, Stephen Gilchrist, Winter 2012

SART 25, SART 31, SART 72, Painting I, II, III, Thomas Ferrara, Winter 2012

ANTH 74, The Human Spectrum, Nathaniel Dominy, Spring 2015

ANTH 3, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2021

Geography 31.01, Postcolonial Geographies, Erin Collins, Fall 2023

Studio Art 17.08, Digital Drawing, Karol Kawiaka, Winter 2024

Studio Art 17.08, Digital Drawing, Karol Kawiaka, Winter 2024

Exhibition History

Crossing Cultures: The Owen and Wagner Collection of Contemporary Aboriginal Australian Art at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 15, 2012-March 10, 2013; Toledo Museum of Art, April 11-July 14, 2013.

Layered Histories: Indigenous Australian Art from the Kimberely and Central Desert, Amelia Kahl, Curator, 5 August 2023 - 2 March 2024, Citrin Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire.

Publication History

Stephen Gilchrist, editor, Crossing Cultures, The Owen and Wagner Collection of Contemporary Aboriginal Art at the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2012, p. 14, Fig 1.13; p. 54, Fig 4.4, p. 148. no. 82.

John R. Stomberg, The Hood Now: Art and Inquiry at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2019, p. 194, ill. plate no. 125.

Provenance

Framed, Stuart Park, Northern Territory, Australia (Certificate of Purchase); sold to Will Owen (1952-2015) and Harvey Wagner (1931-2017), Chapel Hill, North Carolina, September 28, 2000; given to present collection, 2009.

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