Rock art includes painting and engraving or carving.

The oldest dated rock art painting in

Australia is a charcoal image on a rock, drawn approximately 28,000 years ago, one of the
oldest known pieces of rock art on Earth. In rock engraving and rock carving, there are many
interesting techniques used depending on the type of rock.

Small dots are painted with traditional Aboriginal colours onto rocks, caves and other surfaces.
They were mostly images of animals, lakes and the Dreamtime.

Stone arrangements of varying sizes are widely found across Australia. Some are large with
metre high stones whilst others are much smaller.

Aboriginal art requires its own education. There is an abundance of knowledge that must be
learnt before engaging with a piece of Aboriginal art. Most Australians and tourists might think
it is just dots and fine lines. This is a myth. Only artists from certain tribes are allowed to
adopt the dot technique. Where the artist comes from and what culture has informed his/her’s
tribe will depend on what technique can be used. It is considered both disrespectful and
unacceptable to paint on behalf of someone else’s culture. It is simply not permitted. For example,
the Kulin Nation, which encompasses five different tribes, may not be allowed to use the dotting
technique as it is not in their tribe’s culture, but they can use a technique such as cross hatching

Contemporary aboriginal art is considered to start at the desert community of Papunya in 1971,
when senior desert men began to paint their cultural stories using modern materials. This was
prompted by school teacher Geoffrey Bardon requesting that school children paint their own
stories, leading the senior men to open up their deeply held cultural knowledge to outside
observers. The Papunya Tula desert art movement then influenced other communities to join the
art movement through the following decades. For more details read our article on Contemporary
Aboriginal Art.

Aboriginal art is based on story- telling, using symbols as an alternate method of writing down
stories of cultural importance, as well as transmitting knowledge on matters of survival and land
management. The tradition of drawing in the sand as a teaching method reflects the powerful
use of symbols as a recognised conveyor of meaning, even across vastly different language groups.
Story-telling and symbols provided the starting point for contemporary Aboriginal art.
Aboriginal artists inherit rights to paint certain cultural stories. Artists need authority and
permission to paint traditional stories, and this authority is vested in the custodians of the
knowledge of these stories. Ownership of stories is transmitted down generational lines, held
within certain skin groups or moieties. Therefore, stories are often managed within family groups.

Generally, religion and geography are the subject of the pieces of art……………………….