John Prince Siddon

• Locate Walmajarri on the AITSIS Map of Australia. What is the environment like there – how is it different to where you live?
• Bring Prince into the classroom by watching the artist portrait video.
• Prince is described as having a signature style. How would you describe his ‘signature style’?

This Q&A featured in Tarnanthi: Make and Create, an activity book designed for children.

What made you become an artist?

After an accident I wasn’t able to work as a stockman any more. I had so many ideas and I was bored so I started to paint all kinds of things to pass the time. Now once I started I just couldn’t stop.

How would you describe your work?

Well to me I’m still mixing stories, painting them better than one, somebody has to do it. As Burke and Wills, what a true Aussie. I am making my own stories and making them fit altogether. I’m trying to piece together every animals – North, South, East West – trying to mix them up like a jigsaw – they love each other they hate each other. Landscape, dreamtime stories, kid’s paintings, poetry, animals; put them all together, it’s all the same with my paintings.

What is the role of an artist?

I see that art is always a part of my life and it’s really important for me to tell my stories this way, get them out and share them with the world. If I can say what I want to say I can say it through my art and that can help change people's ideas about art that is made in remote communities.

What do you enjoy about making art?

There are no rules and it helps me get out all my worries. I get worried watching the news and thinking about what is going on in the world and what is happening in my community all around me. I feel sad and get stressed out – art is a way for me to deal with these issues and communicate with the outside world.

Who inspired you?

These kind people and animals and the things are my true blue heroes, not the ones you see on the movies, local hero make you think twice sometimes, make you cry, laugh most of the stories are true. It’s not about getting a top model or the brave things they done. It’s who you are as a person or animals they deserve to be who they once was many untold stories out there today.

Walmajarri people were displaced and relocated through systems of colonisation, resulting in them being exploited as unpaid labourers on cattle stations across the region. Investigate the impact that invasion has had on the Walmajarri people.

Prince often paints about local and global events, notably the 2020 bush fires on Kangaroo Island in South Australia. His imagery of these incidents is combined with the ancestral stories of his desert homeland to create scenes with patterns and dazzling spectrum of colour. In some instances, Siddon has used elements from his paintings to create a tessellated pattern. Using a significant event as inspiration design your own tessellated pattern.

In a 2020 Sydney Morning Herald article about Prince, critic John McDonald stated: ‘Siddon has more in common with Hieronymus Bosch than Papunya Tula’.

In ‘Prince and the Revolution, an article featured in Art Guide Australia 2020, writer Barnaby Smith wrote: ‘Siddon is a dazzling mixture of Rover Thomas and often confronting imagery of avant-garde filmmaker Alexander Jodorowsky’

• Divide the class into two and debate one of these statements, research and use works of art as evidence to support your argument.

Prince began painting in 2009 and he likes to paint on different surfaces - from boab nuts to bullock skulls. His work responds to both local and world events which he combines with the ancestral stories of his desert homeland.

The boab tree, also called bottle trees or the tree of life, is native to the northern part of Western Australia. Prince loves boab trees - they produce large nuts that are a great source of food and medicine. They also make great art!

Have you ever seen a boab tree? If not take a look at the photograph below by artist James Tylor.

In Dedication (2019) Prince has produced another national portrait, this time during the peak of the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires. Prince watched on from his studio as the apocalyptic scenes unfolded across his television screen, witnessing in paint a country in crisis. Dedication pays tribute to the bravery of the fire and police men and women that fought the fires, as well as “people who lost their lives, homes and land, livestock, even animals who lost their home.”[1]

Dedication is also testament to the precarious ecological and political state of contemporary Australia. Two portraits of the current Prime Minister Scott Morrison feature prominently; in Queensland a menagerie of animals dance around him – the koala, in particular, bears a firestick – while in Western Australia an emu mines Morrison’s ear. Prince also summons Walmajarri cosmology:

“The bush man ancestor is blowing didgeridoo water out the ocean. The bush woman on the WA side is very upset because the fire destroyed her land and the place she grew up fishing. Her grandmother is buried somewhere there in an unknown grave, while fire is coming close.”[2]

Prince embeds the knowledge and stories of narrangkarni as powerful lessons for the twenty-first century. His potent mix of desert iconography, contemporary storytelling and political acumen place him in “a long tradition of Kimberley painters who see truth telling, communicating their personal history and lived experiences, as a matter of urgency”[3]

[1] All Mixed Up: John Prince Siddon, p1

[2] Ibid.

[3] Emilia Galatis, All Mixed Up: John Prince Siddon, p3

The History of Australia, 2018 by Melbourne based artist Richard Lewer is a nine-panel work of art exploring a national narrative. Travelling through time this work references moments in Australian history. While each panel depicts imagery suggestive of specific moments that have shaped Australia, collectively the work explores broader concepts of encounters, conflict and unrest.

• Identify the major events in each of Lewer’s panels and place them in chronological order.
• ‘Australia’ is just over 200 years old but scientific evidence tells us that Aboriginal people have been here for at least 50,000 years. Why do you think the majority of events depicted in The History of Australia are from the last 200 years?

How are Mix it all up and The History of Australia similar? Create your own visual history or national portrait of Australia. What significant moments will you choose to include, which will you leave out and why?

In Dedication (2019) Prince has produced another national portrait, this time during the peak of the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires. This work also pays tribute to the bravery of the fire and police men and women that fought the fires, as well as people who lost their lives, homes and land, livestock, even animals who lost their homes.

• Select a current political or social issue impacting Australia today. Investigate this event or issue. What questions do you have? Investigate injustices surrounding this issue and create a work of art or piece of writing in response to your concerns or pays tribute to people involved in the event.