John Cummins

John Cummins, a member of the Kuku Yalanji people, was born in 1950. He, and his brother Luke began their lives helping their father Darcy (Mulga) with his work as an itinerant worker on the land - erecting fences, stick picking and ring barking. Darcy also taught his children to hunt, fish and gather to assist in feeding the family when times were hard. The brothers travelled extensively throughout Queensland with their father, siblings and other family members including their uncle Willie. With no formal education, and constantly on the move, John was only in the 7th grade by the time he was 15 when he left school to seek paid employment. During the 1970s John and his brother Luke began to meet other family members and were taken north to their traditional country. It was then they began to learn more about their culture and language and the stories of the Kuku Yalanji. John studied commercial art at the Townsville College of TAFE (now Barrier Reef Institute of TAFE) in the early 1980s. At the same time he began delving deeper into the cultural origins of his (Western or Sunset) Kuku Yalanji people whose land stretches from the Palmer River to Laura. He designed a book cover for noted historian Henry Reynolds and created designs for murals and promotional posters for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission [ATSIC]. One of his designs, a logo commissioned for the Fifth Festival of Pacific Arts in Townsville in 1988, won a national competition and featured brochures promoting Australian tourism and travel. John's paintings feature Black Mountain and Quinkan figures and are inspired by one of the largest and most spectacular bodies of rock art in Australia. It is so vast an area that even today, only a fraction of this great treasury of rock art is still largely uncovered. As he explored this imagery, he engaged with senior elders as to which stories and figures could be depicted. Finally he was given permission as senior storytellers of the Kuku Yalanji to make these images public as a means of both preserving it and continuing it. Had other elders not agreed, it is likely that most of this information and history would have been lost with the passing of their generation. Having painted on bark using traditional earth pigments John spent 10 years during the late 1990s and early 2000s recording these stories in acrylic paint on canvas while living in Victoria. During that time they completed more than 150 paintings, which act as a unique cultural record of the first peoples of Cape York. A joint project between the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery and the University of Ballarat in 2004 enabled John to spend several weeks as artist in residence during which time he produced a major commission for the Ballarat Turf Club. His works were featured in Story Place 2003 at the Queensland Art Gallery and Jowalyuppa 2004 at Ballarat Fine Art Gallery and will be the subject of a major touring retrospective and catalogue Sunset Yalanji Dreaming in 2022. © Adrian Newstead