Aboriginal symbols are an essential part of a long artistic tradition in Australian Aboriginal Art and remain the visual form to retain and record significant information.
Aboriginal people used symbols to indicate a sacred site, the location of a waterhole and the means to get there, a place where animals inhabit and as a way to illustrate Dreamtime stories.
To understand and appreciate Aboriginal symbols (or iconography) imagine how you would indicate, record and recall essential information or place names or events in a non material world.
Since Aboriginal people travelled vast distances across their country, significant information was recorded using symbols in regular ceremony. Sand painting and Awelye (body painting) ceremonies kept the symbols alive and remembered. Later, these symbols were transformed into a more permanent form using acrylic on canvas but the meanings behind the symbols remains the same.