The ‘HSFG’ shrine is said to be a tribute to Aboriginal people and to acknowledge their search for God. The shrine is an example of "installation" art, comprising seven panels and their surrounds. The surrounds include stonework comprising subtly outlined figures of a kind readily recognizable to those familiar with Aboriginal rock art. The shrine is the work of well known Koori "urban" artist and sculptor Ms Fiona Foley. The work appears genuinely and authentically Aboriginal, with every indication that it is as fully and authentically Aboriginal as it is possible to be. The art also speaks to a white audience familiar with "conceptual" or "idea" art and the technique of "bricolage". In both its Aboriginal and its western dimensions, this is art which is meant to be read. The key to ‘reading’ the art is an understanding of the symbols and representations contained in the shrine.

What NFTP has revealed to date has not involved the disclosure of Aboriginal "secret/sacred" information. Further, much of what NFTP has disclosed has been drawn from information put on the public record elsewhere, directly or indirectly, by the artist herself.

Readers will recall that the last issue of NFTP set out how the multi-referential, phonetic "Black Cock / a_too" (or_two) word play had been encoded in the second panel of the St Stephen’s Cathedral shrine "The Human Search For God". Readers will also recall that Ms Foley’s 1991 version of "Eliza Fraser Heads For Trouble" had been described by the Nigerian artist and critic Olu Oguibe as her "fist-in-the-face piece". Further, the point was made that Mr Oguibe’s web site was of interest for its analyses of this particular style of art and the "racial disregard" it expresses. This seventh issue of NFTP explores how the seven panels in the "shrine" can be read in the form of a sentence from left to right as, "Eliza Fraser Heads For Trouble".

In this particular reading, the first (i.e., the "lone dingo") panel represents "Eliza Fraser". While this panel also bears other - in fact multiple other meanings - this first, un-named panel itself bears a high degree of similarity to another work by Ms Foley, "A Three Legged Dog Day". In the book "In The Wake Of First Contact", Kay Schaffer discusses how, like Fiona Foley, the artist Sydney Nolan had done a series of paintings on "Eliza Fraser". Ms Schaffer also shows how Ms Foley in her "Eliza Fraser" works had drawn from Sydney Nolan’s earlier works. It is readily apparent that the work "Mrs Fraser" from Nolan’s 1947-48 series provides key artistic inspiration for both "A Three Legged Dog Day" and its close equivalent, the un-named first panel in St Stephen’s.

Per Schaffer, in Nolan’s painting, "a vulnerable Mrs Fraser is portrayed as a naked animal blending in to the alien bush." Ms Schaffer quotes Robert Melville in his introduction to Sydney Nolan’s "Paradise Garden": "her plight arouses not pity but the sense of her openness to sexual assault. She is a woman liable to being taken … She would spit and snap like a female dingo, without offering resistance."

The Nolan version of "Eliza Fraser" – "this disturbing image", per Schaffer - is presented by Nolan as a three limbed or three legged figure. In "A Three Legged Dog Day", Ms Foley presents the dingo figure exactly as it is found in the Cathedral, with two hind legs and the front legs as one in silhouette from the ankles up.

From Nolan’s earlier work and Foley’s own "A Three Legged Dog Day", it is apparent that the "lone dingo" in panel one is, among other meanings, a symbol for "Eliza Fraser".

In the second panel, as set out in the September issue of NFTP, at a non "secret/sacred" mythological level the male symbol represents the severed head of the male lover in the Aboriginal creation story, that is, the Rainbow or Rainbow Serpent. Also, the female symbol provided the basis of the "or_two" element of the phonetic "Black Cock/ a_too" word play.

For the purposes of the word play being explored here, the male symbol is the "head" and the female symbol is, as with the "or_two" word play, a form of plural signifier, "s". For the purposes of this word play, finally, the second panel is read noun-to-verb phonetically, as "head_s".

The next element concerns not panel 3 alone, but the four "female fertility" panels – (3,4,5,6) - read as a group. No’s 3,4,5,6 are the smaller, square panels which are also grouped together in the overall form of a square. This group of panels is simply "four", read phonetically as "for".

The "four" word play is not new; it has a venerable history in the western occultic tradition. It was in fact a favoured word play of the well known British, anti-Catholic occult practitioner and writer, Aleister Crowley, 1875 to 1947. An outline of Crowley’s "four" word play can be found in the catalogue "The Occult: An Exhibition of material from the Monash University Library Rare Book Collection, 4 June – 24 July 1998", by Richard Overell and Keith Richmond, (www: lib.monash. edu.au/hss/rare/ xocc.htm).

According to Messrs Overell and Richmond, "Aleister Crowley was without doubt one of the most influential occult practitioners of this century… (1898) was .. the year in which he joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a group given to the practice of ceremonial magic whose membership included the poet W.B. Yeats and a number of other literary, thespian and artistic luminaries of the time. Crowley was a devotee both of pseudonyms and also of word play." Crowley was also widely known, indeed famous, for the incorporation of sex and drugs in his occult rituals.

Overell and Richmond list "Book 4: Part III, Magick in Theory and Practice / by The Master Therion" in their occultic rare book catalogue: "To Crowley the design of a book itself could be of magical or talismanic significance, an idea clearly visible in his magickal magnum opus Book Four. Advertised as a ‘treatise on magic and mysticism for beginners’, Part I was to deal with mysticism and meditation, Part II with the theory of magic, Part III with its practice, and Part IV with The Book of the Law. The first two parts were intended by Crowley to measure four inches by four inches [they didn’t quite make it, but were at least square, retaining the idea of four equal sides] and were priced ‘as a function of four’; Part I at ‘four groats’ (one shilling), and Part II at ‘four tanners’ (two shillings)… An unknown number of this first edition – which had as its main title Magick in Theory and Practice – were issued in red wrappers, in four fascicules , thereby continuing the theme of four."

Interestingly, when the four square "female fertility" panels (3,4,5,6) are read as one in the HSFG shrine in St Stephen’s, the overall series of seven panels - (1, 2, 3 to 6, 7) - becomes ‘a function of four’. Panels 3,4,5,6 themselves, of course, also operate independently as ‘a function of four’, and are read here phonetically as "for".

The seventh and final panel is the "trouble" panel, the one which depicts the Fraser Island ancestors, concerning whom, per Schaffer, there has been much contention in the various conflicting versions of the Eliza Fraser story.

Per "Aboriginal English: A Cultural Study", by J.M. Arthur of the Australian National Dictionary Centre, "trouble" means "actions or events of a serious nature, such as murder, serious violence, that are likely to lead to intervention by the authorities, particularly non-Aboriginal authorities. This is similar to the general English use of trouble but often includes the added sense that trouble is something that will mean a European involvement in Aboriginal matters, or will bring about conflict with Europeans."

Olu Oguibe has told us that the later 1991 version of "Eliza Fraser Heads For Trouble" was "Foley’s fist-in-your-face piece".

If the version here was meant to be different, why the use of coded meaning and the secrecy? Also, why was a Crowleyesque ‘four’ theme coded into a shrine in a Catholic Cathedral, and into a tribute to Aboriginal people?

So, where does the Church stand? With this artwork? … Or, somewhere else?

Tim Pemble-Smith
3 – 111 Central Avenue
Indooroopilly Q 4068
after hours: (07) 3871 2047