William Barak at work on the drawing 'Ceremony' at Coranderrk

William Barak was a highly respected Elder, diplomat and artist of the Wurundjeri people of the Woiwurrung nation, born near the area that is today North Croydon, in Melbourne. Throughout his life he experienced great change, his family’s traditional lifestyle having been disrupted by the colonisation of Wurundjeri Country. As a youth he attended a mission school, where he was taught English, and for a time he was part of the Native Police Force. Barak and his cousin Simon Wonga shared the role of Ngurangaeta, head of the Wurundjeri people, and in 1863 led the establishment of Coranderrk, a self-sufficient Aboriginal farming community in the Yarra Valley area, on the outskirts of present-day Melbourne.  

Barak became the best-known Aboriginal artist of the nineteenth century. From
the 1880s he began making paintings and artefacts as a way to record cultural ceremonies, which by the 1880s had been banned at Coranderrk by the Governing Board for Aboriginal Reserves. In this work figures clad in possum-skin cloaks are shown stomping, clapping and singing, and are surrounded by totemic kangaroos, birds, echidna, snake and goanna. His lively use of repetition and rhythmic lines helps to evoke the sound and movement of the corroboree. This work was made in 1899 for Joseph Shaw, who was at that time superintendent of Coranderrk. Remarkably, Barak was photographed – by the Presbyterian minister, Johannes Heyer – working on this particular drawing.

Julie Robinson, Senior Curator Prints, Drawings and Photographs