ABORIGINAL PAINTED TWINGO CAR by BALARINJI
1994, a 25 000 km journey, with a Renault Twingo
XOXO
Coming to Australia for a long journey all around the land...without catching its soul and spirit never occured to me.
I had to bring back home a piece of this earth. Yet how does a human being relate to this land ? How can he feel the memory and the ancestors ?
When the little Renault, a 3.42 metre left hand drive Twingo, landed in Sydney on the 14th of june 1994 nobody knew she would be able to cover 25.000 km on and off the road on bitumen, sand, gravel, corrugated, dirt and dust ! All the way through the Kimberleys, the Gambarel Highway, Warakurna...and Cape York !
50 days and 35 hours of footage...but what about her own memory ?
If only Twingo could talk ! If only Twingo could tell Australia ...and without a word, say her story back home wrapped in a live memory.
She met her designer, and now Australia clings to her body , John Moriarty from Balarinji created an Art Work for her, the air brush artist Frank Lee painted her skin ...and Twingo dreaming was born !
« Twingo dreaming » tells the story of journeys by spirit ancestors across the Australian lanscape. It mixes contemporary graphic style ans traditional Aboriginal Art motifs in distinctive scenery colours.
John Moriarty, the principal of Balarinji design, says the concept uses styles from Nothern and Southern Australia. The body colour is based on Alice's Ochre, Red remembers centre sands, Blue-Purple, the distant mountain ranges, Green , the bush in the wet season ans Yellow , the rocky creek beds .
Twingo is alive and moving, her memory is 40.000 years old, indelible and unique as Australia and its message from the past to the future.
THE STORY
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THE BALARANJI
DESIGN
JOHN MORIARTY
FRANCK LEE
Balarinji & John Moriarty : 30 years promoting Indigenous Art
Balarinji is a leading Australian design company, established by John and Ros Moriarty in 1983.
Balarinji has received commissions from government, corporate and celebrity clients across the globe. The company's distinctive Indigenous designs have appeared on objects ranging from posters to Qantas planes.
Balarinji is part of the Indigenous art and communications company, Jumbana Group. Jumbana was the Aboriginal name given to John Moriarty at birth into the Yanyuwa community at Borroloola in the Northern Territory.
The spirit behind Balarinji designs
Inspiration for the founding of Balarinji Design followed the birth of the Moriarty’s first child, Tim. In 1983, John drew turtle designs and Ros printed them on Tim's doona cover. From this initial collaboration came Balarinji, which is also Tim’s skin name from the Yanyuwa people.
From its early textile designs, Balarinji has expanded and diversified into building brand strategies and corporate identities. At the heart of the business is a philosophy of ‘the spirituality behind the design’. As John says, ‘This is something that all Australians … can relate to, so they can understand this country and feel more part of it’.
The National Museum of Australia purchased the Balarinji Art Collection of more than 300 gouache paintings from different design projects, and the Moriarty family gifted the accompanying Balarinji archive through the Cultural Gifts Program.
FRANK LEE
AUSTRALIA is blessed to have a number of airbrush artists regarded as masters of their craft... they all cite Frank Lee as their inspiration.
Frank’s been creating for most of his 83 years and has dabbled in many artistic media, but he’s best known for his panel van work in the 70s and early 80s, when he was the go-to guy for a custom paint job in Sydney.
To the question « What’s the most unusual vehicle you’ve painted? » he answers :
« Definitely the Renault Twingo back in the mid-90s. A French journalist drove it around Australia with a camera crew and covered 17,000km. They took it everywhere, including Cape York, and tackled river crossings; it was unbelievable.
Renault were keen to have it painted and tracked me down at Sydney Tech where I was teaching airbrushing part-time. It was an indigenous art piece created by the Balarinji Design Studio, who are responsible for the Qantas planes; I painted the complete car in a similar fashion and it was shipped back to Paris and put on display in the Renault Museum »
JEAN DULON
