The View from Elsewhere: Anmatjere man

On Easter Saturday, we went in search of a rodeo. We were three adults and a toddler, and we drove 130 km up the Stuart Highway from Alice to Aileron.

I had been wanting an excuse to go to Aileron for a good year or so, the reason being that a giant sculpture of an Aboriginal man -- Anmatjere man -- had been erected there in late 2005. Aileron seems otherwise to be an fairly unremarkable township, which was perhaps the reason for erecting the sculpture. There are a few farms, a health service, an airstrip, a dam and a roadhouse. The place also has to do battle for the tourist dollar with Wycliffe Well, Australia's 'UFO Capital', and Barrow Creek roadhouse further up the road.

I'd been nurturing a guilty fascination with the Anmatjere man, much of which has to do with my love of the kitsch, the absurb and the screamingly inappropriate. What kind of gross racial internalisations, I wondered, could have led to the construction of a larger-than-life replica of the Aboriginal garden gnome of the sort that used to grace suburban yards when I was a child -- and with an Aboriginal community nearby? There were also overtones of the giant banana, the giant pineapple and so forth: which part of the Australian psyche does the desire for giant-size plaster objects come from? Did its Anmatjere man's construction imply that the Aboriginal was in the same category as agricultural produce, the spoils of the land, as it were, or was it a relegation once again of the Aboriginal to same status as 'flora and fauna', as on Australian coins?

There was a further shadow over my conscience in visiting the home of Anmatjere man. At the high school I attended, there was a strong tradition of musicals and plays. The mascot for these performances was an Aboriginal garden gnome by the name of 'Neville', which the production crew had taken hostage somewhere along the line. Neville, if I remember rightly, had the crooked leg, spear-holding pose associated with the typical 'flora and fauna' representation of the Aboriginal male. At every school performance, he would appear in some corner of the stage. I now realise that this was a rather tasteless practice (not least because of the echo of the first Aboriginal MP's name), but I'd like to think it was at some level a rather ironic gloss on the suburban practice of having plaster replicas of 'exotics' such as Mexicans and Aboriginals keep watch over whitefella gardens. It was certainly difficult for me not to think of the trip to Aileron as 'going to see the giant Nev', tho one of my companions spoke sotto voce about a visit to the 'Giant Schlong', on account of the Anmatjere Man's anatomically correct, made-to-scale member. (It's said that there's a time capsule inside Anmatjere Man's left testicle.)

Anmatjere Man stands seventeen metres tall on a hill behind Aileron Roadhouse with white block lettering deliberately designed to echo that on Hollywood Hills. The sculpture was designed and built by Mark Egan, the son of Territory administrator, Ted Egan, who brought the world the 'Drover's Boy'. The project appears to have been accepted by the local Aboriginal community, Anmatjere people, who worked with him on this project. It seems that Aileron and the Anmatjere weren't always a significant part of Egan's plans, though the sculpture is now named Charlie Quartpot, after a local rainmaker. In an interview on The World Today, Egan says:

Well it's something I've thought about for years. I've thought about building a big statue just like that. But I could never think of anywhere to put it and any place that it would look good. And then I ran into a kangaroo up the road here and I got talking to my old mate Greg Dick, who owns the roadhouse here at Aileron, and he's as mad as I am so, after we were talking for a while, yeah, we'll put the big black fella up on the hill.

His offsider, Greg Dick, broaches the macro-fauna issue as follows:

GREG DICK: A lot of people say why put that there? Well I said well I don't know really. I was going to put a kangaroo. It wouldn't look right in the dimensions of a big size.... A big Hereford bull or something that wouldn't look right. And yet the man turns out to be the picture and plus it suits the country.

He later notes an economic motive: the Roadhouse has only been getting twenty-five per cent of passing trade.

On arrival at Aileron, I demanded photo opportunities: a long distance shot followed by a closer one of Anmatjere Man. We then did a recce of the area for the entry to the rodeo. We found a checkpoint further up the road, guarded by Rotarians in shorts. They wanted $30 a head -- not just a car -- for the entry fee. We weren't impressed, and went back to the roadhouse to consider our options (and whether we wanted to make such a big contribution to Rotary). There were a few locals behind the bar, including a couple of Aboriginal women, one of whom was wearing a pink negligee over shorts, teamed with a cowgirl.

'Do you think they'll let me in for twenty bucks dressed like this?' she said.

There were some mobs outside in the car park. My friend A went over to talk to them. Some of the old men told her they wouldn't be going in, because the price was too steep.

'Which is a shame,' A said, 'Given the contribution they would have made to the local stock industry.'

We ate a roadhouse lunch near the giant wedge-tail eagle in his enclosure and watched as the fifteen-month-year-old ran in a seemingly endless loop up and down the slippery-dip and back round again. The rodeo was vetoed; we decided to climb the hill to see Anmatjere Man up close and personal.

When we arrived at the base of Anmatjere Man, my friend A rubbed one of his foot and said how much she liked the tactile experience of sculpture, in comparison to other forms of art.

'I guess this is the closest we'll ever get to "David" out here,' she said.

What struck me about Anmatjere Man was his relative lack of kitsch. There's a sense of youth and vigour in this sculpture. He has a spear but his stance is wide and confident, with both feet on the ground, unlike the crook-kneed Aboriginal 'fauna' pose of old. There's also a significant amount of detail -- Anmatjere Man sports dreads, for example -- it's quite a contemporary evocation of the iconic traditional man, tho whether such a man still exists and why not is a whole other realm of question. For a moment I flirted with the idea that Anmatjere Man might be a bit like Mediterranean people reclaiming the word 'wog', but that's probably way too broad-minded. Looking up between Anmatjere Man's legs, it's possible to read the artist's initials 'M.E.' on his left testicle.

(You can also read Tjilpi's post on the unveiling of the Anmatjere man.)

Comments

Jesus. He leaves me kind of speechless. Especially the statement about the kangaroo, bull, or, I know, Anmatjere Man. I concede he has a certain dignity, but still . . .(and then to have the artist's initials on his testicle. sheesh.)

Posted by: sophie Cunningham | April 10, 2007 at 08:54 AM

Well, those comments say it all about the sponsor's intentions, but AM does have a certain melancholy charisma up close.

Interesting that the comparison was drawn to 'fauna', rather than a tribute to the Aboriginal men of the area & their contribution, etc. After all, western civilisation has constructed countless statues of 'great white men'.

Posted by: elsewhere | April 10, 2007 at 10:10 AM