ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how art has provided such a meeting ground for culture, collectively, and individual selfhood in a remote Aboriginal community in Australia. It focuses on one particular group of artists young male painters. The chapter discusses that rock painting is still practised in western Arnhem Land, although today this is rare. In Kunbarlanja, western Arnhem Land, rock-painting-inspired contemporary art has assisted in the formation of contemporary social and group identities for Aboriginal men and women. The chapter contextualises today's art with a discussion of the rock paintings found in western Arnhem Land and the twentieth-century movement toward collecting portable' art from this region. From learning to paint under the guidance of rock artists, to using rock paintings as inspiration and artistically adapting rock painting imagery for a contemporary audience, Kunbarlanja-based artists construct and renegotiate their individual and group identities through the production of their own art and their rock art inheritance.
