Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Already subscribed? Log in. Forgotten your password? Want an ad-free experience? View offers. Events Visualisation. Data In. Login Create Account Help. How to contribute. How to moderate. How to share your images. Advanced search. Lin Onus b. The award-winning artist Lin Onus b. As Eather so aptly put it: "Lin knew no distinction between the political and the beautiful.
When beset by detractors, rejected by bureaucrats or under fire from urban political thought police, it was to Lin that I, and many others, would turn for advice and support. His voice was always one of reason and perspective. Several months later I went, to my everlasting benefit. It didn't matter what Lin thought of other people, he never criticised them in public and always supported their art, regardless of any personal ill-feelings.
He had enemies but the closest he came to revenge was his installation in the exhibition Political Bedrooms at Fireworks Gallery in Brisbane a year or two ago.
Lin's single bed featured a body face down with pink and blue knives deeply embedded in its back. Each knife bore the initials of those that had betrayed him over the years. While disloyalty ate at him, his loyalty to friends in distress was unwavering.
The artist, dealer and entrepreneur Neil McLeod, who was vilified mercilessly by those who accused him of forging bark paintings, found in Lin a loyal and forthright ally through his darkest days. According to McLeod: "Lin put up his hand and declared where he stood. Right beside me. Regardless of any fear that some of the mud might stick to him. The day after the funeral, a hundred friends and family gathered on the hill dominating the cemetery in the tiny settlement of Cummeragunja on the NSW-Victorian boarder.
It is a truly beautiful place with the grassy plains dotted with purple flowers. It felt as if we were standing in one of Lin's paintings, looking out on the Barmah Forest and the Murray as the Pachelbel Canon played.
There were many testimonials before his wife Jo and son Tiriki spread his ashes across the hillside. Lin had won the National Heritage Art Award in for his painting of the Barmah Forest at Cummeragunja, which could be seen from where we stood. The highly-charged landscape painted with gums flooded by the overflow of the Murray has three jigsaw puzzle pieces laying in the forest ready to be placed in position.
It is as if the artist had almost completed what he set out to achieve. Only the last few pieces needed to be set in place. Although he died at 47 years of age, Lin Onus has left a legacy greater than most can ever hope to achieve. His capacity to understand so many complex things will live on across the generations, frozen for all to see through the enormous legacy of his art.
It has been said that Lin Onus would have gone on to become one of the truly great Australian artists. If Lin were here, I, and so many of his friends and admirers, would say to him: "Don't worry, mate, you are. Lin Onus, who died prematurely in Melbourne on 24 October at the age of 47, is widely acknowledged as a pioneer of the Aboriginal art movement in urban Australia and in many ways was a man ahead of his time.
As an artist and activist of extraordinary versatility and innovation, he addressed the political and social concerns of his people in a career that spanned the last three decades of the struggle for Indigenous rights. Tragically, Lin passed in , at the age of The loss was felt keenly around the country.
As the new millennium dawned, a major retrospective, Urban Dingo: The life and art of Lin Onus, opened in Sydney, before showing in Melbourne and Brisbane. Other exhibitions have followed, including a touring show through regional Victoria in Today, his original works can found in galleries around the country and are highly sought after on the contemporary art market. Lin was a groundbreaking artist, who used his talent to advance the cause of Indigenous Australians. His gift lay in his ability to create art that, while accessible to the mainstream, was uncompromising in its message.
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