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The Late Bill Evans Collection, Sydney
Lot 56
Maker UnknownA shield Adnyamathanha People, South Australia height: 65.0cm
27 August 2025, 14:00 AEST
SydneySold for AU$3,075 inc. premium
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Alex Clark
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Merryn Schriever
Managing Director, Australia
Maker Unknown, A shield
Adnyamathanha People, South Australia
natural earth pigments on wood, handle verso removed
height: 65.0cm
natural earth pigments on wood, handle verso removed
height: 65.0cm
Footnotes
PROVENANCE
Collection of Paul Lewis
Collection of the Late Bill Evans, Sydney
For a similar example see, Unknown, Adnyamathanha people, South Australia, Transitional shield, c.1930s, carved and incised hardwood, collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
Belonging to a rich and continuous tradition of carving and decoration, renewed interest in the cultural and artistic practices of the Adnyamathanha People has resulted in research and exhibitions focused on the objects and contemporary artists working in the region. An example held in the Collections of Museums Victoria, Melbourne, notes:
'The lands of the Adnyamathanha people are approximately 500km north of Adelaide in the northern Flinders Ranges, in South Australia. This area includes Lyndhurst and Moolawatana Homestead in the north-west and north-east, Lake Frome in the east, and Parachilna and Blinman in the south. Atuwarapanha (Mount Serle) and Wayanha (Mount McKinlay) in the central-north of this area are important focal points for Adnyamathanha traditions and more recent history.
The Adnyamathanha traditional owners continue to live and practice their culture on their ancestral lands. In 2016 the oldest known evidence of Aboriginal settlement in arid Australia was found on the lands of the Adnyamathanha people in the Flinders Ranges, proving between 46,000 and 49,000 years of continuous occupation.
Many contemporary projects which focus on cultural maintenance and revival have been undertaken by Adnyamathanha peoples in recent times.
During the early 1930s, artists from the Adnyamathanha community in the Flinders Ranges created beautiful and unique material culture depicting insects, lizards and birds. Regrettably the names of these highly skilled artists were not recorded, but the museum's collection of small shields, containers, boomerangs and clubs is remarkable. The engravings are painted black to contrast with the dark wood of the background, highlighting the intricate figures.'
Of the example held in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, research published at the time of the South Australian Museum's Yurtu Ardla exhibition posits that the collection's shield may be the work of artist and carver Davy Ryan. Academic Darren Jorgensen notes in his article for Artlink magazine of the Museum's shield, 'Davy Ryan's wooden shield is inscribed with rows of kangaroos and emus, a man atop a bucking horse and a heart inscribed with the words "God is Love" in a series of contradictory images of frontier life. Ryan is an avant-garde innovator here, folding the frontier's competing ways of life onto the one shield, offering figures of identification for the different peoples passing through its missions and stations.'