Shared Sky

The SKAO’s Indigenous Astronomy/Art Exhibition
The Girl Who Made Stars
The girl who made the stars artwork

Shared Sky stems from a vision by the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO) to bring together under one sky Aboriginal Australian and South African artists in a collaborative exhibition celebrating humanity’s ancient cultural wisdom. This vision embodies the spirit of the international science and engineering collaboration that is the SKA project itself, bringing together many nations around two sites in Australia and South Africa to study the same sky.

It reflects the richness of the artist’s ancestor’s understanding of the world developed across countless generations observing the movements of the night sky. Shared Sky explores how this sophisticated understanding of celestial mechanics resonates in the work of living artists that are sharing their insights with scientists working to unlock the secrets of the Universe.

Understanding what sustains the rhythms and patterns of the world around us continues to be one of humankind’s most enduring fascinations. The movement of objects across the night sky has been a profound source of inspiration for artists since time immemorial. The desire to understand has informed creation myths and stories amongst human populations across the globe for countless generations. It is what has inspired both groups of artists in this exhibition, and what drives the large international teams of scientists and engineers developing one of the world’s greatest scientific endeavours in Australia and South Africa: the SKA radio telescope project.

Yellabiddy Time - T Green
YellaBiddy Time Artwork

Above: A collaborative painting from Aboriginal Yamaji Artists from Western Australia and a collaborative quilt from South African indigenous artists exposed at the Shared Sky exhibition. Above Right: Ilgali Inyayimanha  ‘Shared Sky’ © 2014 Yamaji Art Centre. Above Left: The Girl Who Made Stars © 2014 Bethesda Foundation. All rights reserved.

 

The Shared Sky concept

Shared Sky connects indigenous artists working in remote communities from either side of the Indian Ocean that have ancient cultural connections to the two sites where the SKA will be located.

Being located on similar latitudes on both continents, the two sites in Australia and South Africa present essentially identical views of the night sky to the peoples that have lived there for tens of thousands of years, and to whom some of the oldest known artwork on earth can be attributed. Shared Sky reflects the SKA’s One Sky concept – that no borders exist in the sky and that the night sky is an increasingly scarce natural resource that belongs to and is shared by all humanity.

Artist Impression - SKAO at Night
Artist impression SKA-Mid & SKA-Low

Australian Aboriginal Heritage

Shared Sky_ Yamaji Art
Australian Aboriginal collaborative work being developed for Shared Sky. © 2014 Yamaji Art Centre. All rights reserved.

For Yamaji people – indeed many Aboriginal communities right across southern Australia –the appearance of the dark shape of an emu stretched out along the length of the Milky Way has heralded the season for collecting emu eggs for thousands of years.

In Western Australia, the Yamaji and other Aboriginal artists who have created artworks for Shared Sky are descendants of, or connected to, Wajarri people that until the mid-19th century were still living a largely traditional way of life, hunting and gathering on the land that is now the site of the Australian SKA.

Many of the artists have visited the Australian SKA site and have spent time talking with scientists on site, under the stars, sharing their stories about the night sky.

Read more about Australian aboriginal heritage

South African indigenous heritage

In South Africa, artists that are descendants of /Xam speaking San people and others of the central Karoo produce collaborative artworks in textiles that explore their own creation myths and celebrate the ancient culture of their ancestors that survived in the harsh environment of the central Karoo desert region for millennia.  These large art quilts reflect a visual language that stretches back to a time of great antiquity.

Although the /Xam language became extinct towards the end of the 19th century. The story-telling traditions of these artists’ forbears has survived through an extraordinary collection of stories comprising verbatim interviewed accounts of hundreds of traditional /Xam stories translated into English.

Creation of the Sun
South African work of art exhibited for Shared Sky. Creation of the Sun, © 2014 Bethesda Foundation. All rights reserved.
Read more about South African indigenous heritage

Join the #SharedSky conversation on Twitter
#sharedsky Tweets

SKAOSocial Media

Significance

Shared Sky presents an unprecedented opportunity for these peoples, who share so much through their common colonial histories, to reflect upon the countless generations of proud custodianship of their respective homelands and draw strength and inspiration from each other. That these communities developed such rich and distinctive cultures over thousands of generations in absolute isolation – and an entire Indian Ocean apart – yet share so many deep concerns for the preservation of their cultural heritage, is fitting testament to the power of collaboration.

Stories passed on through meticulous oral traditions from one generation to another across the millennia, and the profoundly complex understandings of celestial mechanics common to both cultures, has been brought together in this way through the cultural agency of the Square Kilometre Array project and the willingness of scientists to reach out and appreciate alternative ways of seeing.

Sponsors

Shared Sky is presented by the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project and sponsored by the SKA Organisation, SKA South Africa and SKA Australia.

To see full acknowledgements

Gallery

Image showing one of the Shared Sky quilts created to show the sun leaving his house to light the world.
Image showing one of the Shared Sky quilts created to show the moon bringing about the origin of death.
Image showing one of the Shared Sky quilts created to show the moon waxing and waning in conflict with the sun.
Image showing one of the Shared Sky quilts created to show the formation of the Milky Way.
Image showing one of the Shared Sky quilts created to show the formation of the Milky Way.
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption "In Nieu Bethesda, the term Bushman used to be considered abusive. People identified as coloured, having lost language, culture, land, and identity generations ago. Using roots as a symbol for connectedness, the group began to explore the /Xam mythology as a way of connecting to their own ancestral past."
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption “It doesn’t matter where we live on this barna (earth). Nganha (we) are all sharing the same Ilgari (sky). Although we may see different Ilgarijiri (things belonging to the sky) we are looking up at the same stars and constellations. We are Ilgari Inyayimanha (sharing the sky). Bulgari Ingari Inyayimanha. Those two are sharing the sky – Australia and South Africa. Ngahu ilgari Inyayimanha. (We are all sharing the sky).”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption “The Pot is a warrior upside down and he is chasing the Seven Sisters because he wants one of them but the rest are trying to hide her.”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption “My painting is about the Seven Sisters, one is sick and the rest are looking after her.”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption “My painting is about the Seven Sisters, one is sick and the rest are looking after her.”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption “The Seven Sisters is a group of stars you can see in the sky.”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption “This constellation rises in the early evening. One of the favourite constellations of Professor Steve Tingay who related to me of his fascination of this group of stars since his boyhood.”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption "The most spectacular Universe structure in the Milky Way known as one of the Pointers of the Southern Cross.”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption “This is the story of the beautiful morning star, Venus. I was inspired by Ray Norris on a field trip to Boolardy Station, at the site. We were walking around at 4 oclock on a dark morning to catch a glimpse of the ‘Morning Star Rope’ phenomenon, which at certain times of the year appeared. Ray Norris excitedly explained how it appeared. So this is the painting to depict what actually occurs.”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption “An Aboriginal story of the pink and grey galahs. They had a big disagreement with the other birds, so they fled up into the sky to escape. They were then turned into stars forming the Southern Cross and the Pointers.”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption “My painting is about emu eggs. In about April, you will see Emu in the Sky. That’s when you find emu eggs.“
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption “The image of the Emu in Sky when its emu egg time. Colours depict the different patterns and colours of the night & emu – is my contemporary way of painting.”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption "When you see the Emu in the Sky, that's when you know emu start laying emu eggs and people go bush looking for them.”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption “Tells us when the emu eggs have been laid, also Seven Sisters & the Southern Cross.”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption “Yallabirri (emu) lying on the eggs.”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption “When the Yallabirri (emu) appears in the sky in preparation for the laying of the eggs.”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption “With the hatched emu chicks.”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption “I painted this after hearing that Jupiter has 10 moons because when I looked through the telescope I could see at least 2 moons on each side. This inspired me.”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption “This constellation is related to Hydra.”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption “The Water Serpent, stretched across the sky with its many heads, was a monster until it was cut and killed. The red blood drips down from the clot. The browns and orange show that the Hydra can be seen best in autumn.”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption “This is the Milky Way and the stars and clouds. The planet is the Earth.”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption “After talking and spending time with the scientists I want to look at other constellations. The story behind Coma Berenices caught my attention because of the relationship to the importance of the hair to the night sky. In our culture hair is not to be cut at night.”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption “This constellation made me think of a sound wave from space and the symbol of the constellation. I was intrigued by sound coming from space and it sounded like static. That is why I painted it.”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption “Emu start laying eggs at the start of winter. When caterpillar start moving around in long lines tells us that the emu is sitting on the eggs.”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption “Caterpillars crossing the roads, they try to hide their eggs by not leaving too many tracks.”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky artworks with the following caption “The Emu in the Sky represents the time to go looking for emu eggs and it was special to us because our parents – my mum especially – couldn’t wait for emu egg to bake us a special fresh emu egg cake.”
Image showing one of the Shared Sky quilts created to show the creation of dark and the moon.
Image showing one of the Shared Sky quilts created to show Praying Mantis's, Baboons and Red Hartebeest.

If you would like to find out more about the stories connected to the artwork follow the link.

Use of Images

All images of artwork associated with the Shared Sky exhibition are copyrighted and may not be reproduced without written permission.

If you wish to use any images please email the SKAO Communications team at comms@skao.int. 

Last modified on 13 June 2024