art.wikisort.org - Artist

Lin Onus AM (4 December 1948 – 23 October 1996), born William McLintock Onus and also known as Lin Burralung McLintock Onus, was an Australian artist of Scottish-Aboriginal origins. He was the son of activist Bill Onus.

Lin Onus
Born	William McLintock Onus (1948-12-04)4 December 1948 Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Died	23 October 1996(1996-10-23) (aged 47) Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Other names	Ganadila Number 2, Lynn
Known for	Painting, sculpture, printmaking
Children	3, including Tiriki Onus
Parent	Bill Onus (father)

Early life

William McLintock Onus was born at St. George's Hospital, Kew, Melbourne on 4 December 1948[1] His father William Townsend Onus Jr (Bill), a Yorta Yorta man, became the founder of the Aboriginal Advancement League and was the first Aboriginal JP, dying in 1968, a year after a long campaign bore fruit – the success of the referendum giving the national government responsibility for Aboriginal affairs and including Aboriginal people in the determination of the country's population.[2]

Onus was educated in the 1950s and 1960s at Deepdene Primary School and Balwyn High School in Melbourne, Victoria. He was largely a self-taught urban artist who, after being expelled from Balwyn High School for fighting,[3] became a mechanic and spray painter,[4] before making artefacts for the tourist market with his father's business, Aboriginal Enterprise Novelties.[5]

Career

Onus became a successful painter, sculptor and printmaker.[6]

The works of Onus often involve symbolism from Aboriginal styles of painting, along with recontextualisation of contemporary artistic elements. The images in his works include haunting portrayals of the Barmah red gum forests of his father's ancestral country, and the use of rarrk cross-hatching-based painting style that he learned (and was given permission to use)[7] when visiting the Indigenous communities of Maningrida in 1986.

His most famous work, Michael and I are just slipping down to the pub for a minute, has been featured on a postcard, and is a reference to his colleague, artist Michael Eather. The painting is of a dingo riding on the back of a stingray which is meant to symbolise his mother's and father's cultures combining in reconciliation. The image of the wave is borrowed from The Great Wave of Kanagawa (1832), by Japanese printmaker, Katsushika Hokusai.

Honours and awards

• 1993: Member of the Order of Australia "for service to the arts as a painter and sculptor and to the promotion of aboriginal artists and their work"[8]
• 1994: National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Art Award, for Barmah Forest[9] (A$17,000)[10]
• 2012: Inducted to the Victorian Aboriginal Honour Roll[11]

Exhibitions

A major retrospective of Onus' work, entitled Urban Dingo: The Art of Lin Onus (Burrinja) 1948-1996, was held at Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney in 2000. Curated by [Margo Neale and organised by the Queensland Art Gallery, it was developed before his death and staged with the assistance of his family.[12]

Major collections

• Art Gallery of New South Wales[13]
• Holmes à Court Collection[14]

Film

Onus may have been the first Indigenous Australian filmmaker. His son Tiriki Onus made a documentary film about him, released in 2021, called Ablaze, in which he describes his discovery of a 1946 short film made by his father.[15]

Lin Onus was also credited for the sound production on a 1972 film called Blackfire, directed by Bruce McGuinness, which was previously thought to be the first film made by an Indigenous Australian.[16][17][18]

Death and legacy

Lin Onus died suddenly of a heart attack on 23 October 1996 at the age of 47 in Melbourne.[19][1] He was cremated and his ashes scattered at the Cummeragunja cemetery on the NSW-Victorian border.[2]

The youth award in the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Art Award was renamed the Lin Onus Youth Prize from 1998.[20][21]

Posthumous apology

On 8 December 2000, as part of Aboriginal reconciliation, Peter Bond, Principal of Balwyn High School, at the school presentation night at Dallas Brooks Hall, issued a posthumous apology to Lin Onus for being expelled from Balwyn High School in the early 1960s.[22]

Family

Onus was married twice, first to Rosemary Smith and then to Jo Kloster. He had a son with Rosemary and a daughter, and with Jo he had a son, Tiriki Onus,[3][2] who became an opera singer[23] and filmmaker.[15]

References

Further reading

• Bellamy, Louise'Onus goes on show', The Age (newspaper), 23 February 2005.
• Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia, Onus, L., Aboriginal Studies Press for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra, 2001
• Ladds, Amanda. "The Reconciler", The Blurb, Issue 27
• McCulloch, Alan; McCulloch, Susan; McCulloch Childs, Emily. "Onus, Lin", in McCulloch's Encyclopedia of Australian Art (4th edition), Aus Art Editions and The Miegunyah Press, MUP, 2009
• McQueen, Humphrey, "Art Indigenous - Onus"
• Neale, Margo; Onus, Lin. 2000, 'Urban Dingo',The Art and Life of Lin Onus, Queensland Art Gallery and fine Arts Press, Sydney, NSW, Australia
• Travers, Mary. "Death of Lin Onus", Art Monthly Australia, no. 96, 1996, p. 43

External links

• Lin Onus on DAAO

На других языках

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[de] Lin Onus

Lin Onus, geboren als Lin Burralung Mclintock Onus und auch William McLintock Onus genannt (* 4. Dezember 1948; † 23. Oktober 1996[1]) war ein Maler, Bildhauer und Graphiker vom Aboriginesstamm der Wiradjuri[2] aus Melbourne, Australien.

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- [en] Lin Onus

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[fr] Lin Onus

William McLintock Onus, dit Lin Onus, né le 4 décembre 1948 à Melbourne et mort dans la même ville le 24 octobre 1996, est un artiste peintre, sculpteur et sérigraphe australien d'origines aborigène et écossaise.

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