Gideon Polya
Bundoora Arabesque
Bundoora Arabesque (about 1.3 metres x 2.9 metres) is painted on doubly primed canvas in acrylic. The underlying scaffolding geometry is a Mediaeval Muslim tile art pattern upon which is superimposed a classical Renaissance Italian double Golden Rectangle between upper and lower border strips as in Pablo Picasso's "Guernica" . The painting is an abstract expressionist view of Bundoora (the Land that Kangaroos Love in the local Indigenous Australian Wurrundjeri language) where La Trobe University is located. Spot the numerous kangaroos and other wildlife hiding in the bush!
For detailed discussion of "Bundoora Arabesque" see Gideon Polya , “La Trobe University, “Bundoora Arabesque” And Australian Aboriginal Genocide” Countercurrents, 12 August, 2007: sites.google.com/site/aboriginalgenocide/-bundoora-arabes... and www.countercurrents.org/polya120807.htm and "Bundoora Arabesque": sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/bundoo... .
Australian Aborigines suffered Genocide at the hands of the European invaders in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Indigenous population dropped from about 1 million to 0.1 million in the first century after the invasion in 1788, mainly through violence, dispossession, deprivation and introduced disease. The last massacres of Aborigines occurred in the 1920s. Throughout much of the 20th century there was a policy of forcibly removing Aboriginal children from their mothers, a systematic genocidal policy involving the removal of perhaps 0.1 million children. This practice ended in the 1970s. However the continued deliberate deprivation of Aboriginal Australians amounts to a White Australian policy of passive genocide.
The “annual death rate” (2003 figures) is 2.2% (for Aboriginal Australians) and 2.4% (for Aboriginal Australians in the Northern Territory) – as compared to 2.5% (for pre-drought sheep in paddocks of Australian sheep farms) and 0.7% (for White Australians). This is happening in one of the richest countries of the world because of deliberate neglect – Australian Aboriginal health services are funded at 50% of what they should be; many Australian Aborigines live in Third World conditions; the “annual under-5 infant death rate” is over 3 times higher for Aborigines than that for White Australians; 1 in 5 Australian Aborigines have diabetes (mostly type 2 diabetes) which has huge attendant problems such as cardiovascular complications, kidney problems and blindness; and the Australian Aboriginal life expectancy is about 20 years less than that for White Australians.
About 9,000 Indigenous Australians die avoidably each year out of a population of 0.5 million (see "Aboriginal Genocide": sites.google.com/site/aboriginalgenocide/home ).
Bundoora Arabesque
Bundoora Arabesque (about 1.3 metres x 2.9 metres) is painted on doubly primed canvas in acrylic. The underlying scaffolding geometry is a Mediaeval Muslim tile art pattern upon which is superimposed a classical Renaissance Italian double Golden Rectangle between upper and lower border strips as in Pablo Picasso's "Guernica" . The painting is an abstract expressionist view of Bundoora (the Land that Kangaroos Love in the local Indigenous Australian Wurrundjeri language) where La Trobe University is located. Spot the numerous kangaroos and other wildlife hiding in the bush!
For detailed discussion of "Bundoora Arabesque" see Gideon Polya , “La Trobe University, “Bundoora Arabesque” And Australian Aboriginal Genocide” Countercurrents, 12 August, 2007: sites.google.com/site/aboriginalgenocide/-bundoora-arabes... and www.countercurrents.org/polya120807.htm and "Bundoora Arabesque": sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/bundoo... .
Australian Aborigines suffered Genocide at the hands of the European invaders in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Indigenous population dropped from about 1 million to 0.1 million in the first century after the invasion in 1788, mainly through violence, dispossession, deprivation and introduced disease. The last massacres of Aborigines occurred in the 1920s. Throughout much of the 20th century there was a policy of forcibly removing Aboriginal children from their mothers, a systematic genocidal policy involving the removal of perhaps 0.1 million children. This practice ended in the 1970s. However the continued deliberate deprivation of Aboriginal Australians amounts to a White Australian policy of passive genocide.
The “annual death rate” (2003 figures) is 2.2% (for Aboriginal Australians) and 2.4% (for Aboriginal Australians in the Northern Territory) – as compared to 2.5% (for pre-drought sheep in paddocks of Australian sheep farms) and 0.7% (for White Australians). This is happening in one of the richest countries of the world because of deliberate neglect – Australian Aboriginal health services are funded at 50% of what they should be; many Australian Aborigines live in Third World conditions; the “annual under-5 infant death rate” is over 3 times higher for Aborigines than that for White Australians; 1 in 5 Australian Aborigines have diabetes (mostly type 2 diabetes) which has huge attendant problems such as cardiovascular complications, kidney problems and blindness; and the Australian Aboriginal life expectancy is about 20 years less than that for White Australians.
About 9,000 Indigenous Australians die avoidably each year out of a population of 0.5 million (see "Aboriginal Genocide": sites.google.com/site/aboriginalgenocide/home ).