A Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi artist of south-east Australia, Jonathan Jones has created works, from prints to light pieces to vast installations, centred on his relationship to Country and community. His latest work, untitled (walam-wunga.galang), showing at the National Gallery of Australia, is a monument to the cultural practice of breadmaking.
In the early 1990s, a 32,000-year-old grindstone unearthed in New South Wales was revealed as being used for grinding seeds collected to make flour and bread. As writer and farmer Uncle Bruce Pascoe describes, the First Peoples of this region are some of the world’s oldest breadmakers which shifts settler narratives of Western nation building and speaks to the endurance of First Nation knowledge systems. Jones’s work at NGA features a series of sandstone grindstones, accompanied by a soundscape in Wiradjuri language.
These stories are vital at a moment when First Nations sovereignty and continuing cultural practice is gaining momentum yet is often tokenised through mainstream agendas. In an illuminating conversation, Jones considers the role of his work in an era where recognition of Aboriginal people is rapidly increasing, but appreciation of the accomplishments of a 60,000-year-old culture remains varied. Within these complex and vexing tensions Jones
