Abstract:
Uluru (Ayers Rock) is both a tourist icon and a defining symbol of the Australian landscape. Since the 1950s it has been the goal for a pilgrimage undertaken by settler-Australians to Australia’s heart. Described as a natural cathedral, the Rock has occasionally been the focus for Christian worship and its spiritual significance for Anangu has been appropriated and reinvented in terms of a Christian ideology. In particular, William (Bill) Harney (1895-1962) who was Uluru’s first Curator and wrote about the significance of the Rock to Aborigines, misinterpreted and popularised Anangu belief in a number of books and broadcasts. Uluru has also been the subject of paintings by a number of significant Australian and British artists. Two in particular, Michael Andrews and Lloyd Rees, have seen in the Rock a spiritual significance that ultimately derives from Anangu belief. Andrews described Uluru as a ‘radiant incarnation of the Methodist hymn Rock of Ages’, and his way of seeing the Rock is influenced by a number of eclectic sources such as books, television and the media. Rees on the other hand, senses a kind of mystic reverie at Uluru that he gives the name dreamtime. Contemplation of the Rock evokes in Rees a kind of response similar to the eighteenth-century sublime response to landscape. Both artists sense the spiritual dimension of Uluru but each interprets it differently, according to his intuition and artistic outlook.