John Cummins

John Cummins, a member of the Kuku Yalanji people, was born in 1950. His early years were spent in Brisbane, before moving to Canberra and eventually settling in Townsville in the late 1970s. While studying for his teaching degree, John also studied commercial art at the Townsville College of TAFE (now Barrier Reef Institute of TAFE). At the same time he began delving deeper into the cultural origins of his (Western or Sunset) Kuku Yalanji people whose land stretches from the Palmer River to Laura. He, and his brother Luke began their lives helping their father Darcy (Mulga) with his work as an itinerant worker on the land - erecting fences, stick picking and ring barking. Darcy also taught his children to hunt, fish and gather to assist in feeding the family when times were hard. The brothers traveled extensively throughout Queensland with their father, siblings and other family members including their uncle Willie. With no formal education, and constantly on the move, John was only in the 7th grade by the time he was 15 when he left school to seek paid employment. During the 1970s John and his brother Luke began to meet other family members and were taken north to their traditional country. It was then they began to learn more about their culture and language and the stories of the Kuku Yalanji. In the 1980s John designed a book cover for noted historian Henry Reynolds and created designs for murals and promotional posters for the Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Commission [ATSIC]. One of his designs, a logo commissioned for the Fifth Festival of Pacific Arts in Townsville in 1988, won a national competition and featured brochures promoting Australian tourism and travel. John and Luke’s art styles are essentially self-taught, though John gained formal training as a graphic artist. His paintings feature Black Mountain and Quinkan figures and are inspired by one of the largest and most spectacular bodies of rock art in Australia. It is so vast an area that even today, only a fraction of this great treasury of rock art is still largely uncovered. The subject matter of the stories passed on to John and Luke, and the different personalities and characteristics of the Quinkans and the main totemic animal (crocodile) is the inspiration for their works. As they explored this imagery, they engaged in deliberation with senior elders as to which stories and figures could be depicted. Finally they were given permission as senior storytellers of the Kuku Yalanji to make these images public as a means of both preserving it and continuing it. Had other elders not agreed, it is likely that most of this information and history would have been lost with the passing of their generation. Aside from its obvious artistic merit, the art of these painters serves as an important cultural record. Having painted on bark using traditional earth pigments for most of their lives, John and Luke spent 10 years during the late 1990s and early 2000s recording these stories in acrylic paint on canvas while living in Victoria. During that time they completed more than 150 paintings, which act as a unique cultural record of the first peoples of Cape York. During 2004 a joint project between the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery and the University of Ballarat enabled John to spend several weeks as artist in residence during which time he produced a major commission for the Ballarat Turf Club and a number of paintings featured in this exhibition. His works have been featured in Story Place 2003 at the Queensland Art Gallery and Jowalyuppa 2004 at Ballarat Fine Art Gallery.