Untitled (Scar # 40)
Ben Pushman
acrylic on canvas | accession number 709
purchased by the Art Board 2006 - Murdoch University Art Collection

Ben Pushman

born 1979, Perth, Western Australia
lives and works Fremantle, Western Australia
Nyoongar language group
Minang skin group

Ben Pushman is a Nyoongar artist and his people are of the Minang language group and originally from the areas around Denmark in the southwest of Western Australia.

Pushman’s paintings are about his experiences of being an urban Aborigine and the issues that he has had to deal with, such as loss and finding of meaning. One theme that runs through his work is about scarification, which marked the body of an initiated Nyoongar man and formed part of traditional Nyoongar visual language.

Untitled (Scar # 40) is part of a series of paintings which are abstracted images of such scars, which were made by incising the skin of the upper body and arms of young men, as they passed through ‘the law’. They are marks that trace a right-of-passage and traditionally signified the gaining of sacred knowledge and with it responsibility and wisdom. However Ben grew up in a modern urban environment removed from the traditions of such practices where it is uncommon for urban Aborigines to practice scarification and other such powerful forms of ritual.

Even so, Ben’s works do represent a right-of–passage, but a far more contemporary one. For any young Aborigine growing up in a modern city such as Perth, the consequence of difference is all too real. While young urban Aborigines do not necessarily pass through traditional forms of initiation, many of them certainly end up bearing the emotional scars of a life often lived in conflict with conservative Australian society. Indeed, one can read some of the obvious social problems that many young Aborigines face as new forms of ritual and knowledge standing-in for the older lost forms. This is the true subject of these paintings.

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