The Layering of Language

Contemporary Australian artist Imants Tillers’ work is owned by many of our state galleries across the country. Once known, his style is instantly recognisable. Some signature characteristics of Tiller’s work include the use of multiple canvas boards, layering of imagery within the work and, you guessed it, text.

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney owns two such pieces. One hangs in the foyer to the Museum with the text Kunst Kapital scrawled across it (alluding to the value of art) and the other, White Aborigines, is currently on display on the top level of the gallery within the MCA Collection: New Acquisitions in Context 2010 exhibition.

White Aborigines is a large-scale work that draws people towards it from across the room. The one hundred canvas boards that make up the work, the monochromatic colour scheme, the frenzied finger-painting played off against the more stylised figurative elements and, of course, the nineteenth-century-type font in the foreground, this layering of text and multiple images; all work to make up one dynamic and challenging image. 

Tillers often chooses to use the German language for text in his works. This particular work reads “Man seiht dass es Spektakel gibt, Wenn Man sich durcheinander liebt” yet, even for native German speakers approaching the work, it’s no straightforward deduction. The text leads the viewer into the work and is a major key to uncovering it's meaning. Derived from a Wilhelm Busch quote it translates: "One sees that a spectacle ensues, if one loves disorderly". The word spectacle might also be read: turmoil. Wilhelm Busch was a nineteenth century cartoonist, poet and writer well known for his blackly humorous tale of Max and Moritz, who we can now determine are the central figures in the work. These young protagonists cause quite some drama through the course of their tale and, in the end, a spectacle indeed ensues, as one can read from Tillers' imagery. The title of the work now begins to reveal it's significance, in conjunction with the imagery it calls to mind the finger-painting of indigenous culture and the art throughout traditional caves that is evidence to the original inhabitants of this land. The title provokes the viewer to contemplate the history of anglo-saxon and indigenous relationships. Such a "disorderly" display of affection imposed by one culture onto another could only result on turmoil, and one contemplates the Stolen Generation. Tillers has done well to portray complex notions of identity, moral judgments, historical actions and ramifications, and the role they have played in ongoing tensions between Australians. All through the interweaving of text and image.

Imants Tillers. White Aborigines, 1983.