ABOUT LAST SUPPER
IN THE WORDS OF THE ARTIST
Sam was a passenger in a car travelling along the Sydney Harbour Bridge when her version of The Last Supper appeared to her. She had closed her eyes feeling sleepy and saw a scene of the final meal on earth. The journey home felt long as she knew that the mental image she had seen was going to be her most exciting painting to date. What the painting shows us is a gathering. With the powerful backdrop of Uluru (the name in Pitjantjara means Meeting Place) An Elder has gathered together the last remaining members of the wild animal kingdom. He is the only man willing to own the demise of our natural world, mainly because like the animals he has gathered, he too understands what it is like to have your land and traditional lives taken away. It is through his suffering and loss that he understands. For most of the animals their habitat has been taken and given to cattle and sheep. The subsequent loss of bio-diversity has meant that much of the herbage has died and soils have eroded and become dust to be taken away by the wind. Therefore the final meal is a feast of hamburgers. The homogenisation of our produce, our land, our choices has come to this table in what the poem calls “A shameful spread”. In the background of the painting we see a kangaroo boxing a cow, wanting his land back. On the cave walls we see a painting of a Thylacine. The thylacine lived at Uluru and predates the dingo by 2000 years. Man brought the dingo just like man brought the cattle and sheep. The thylacine is an example in history of how interfering with nature can be dangerous and how by observing nature’s nuances can be useful. It is nature showing us something and it is up to us to listen and learn.
LAST SUPPER – THE STORY
“The last individual survivors of twelve species arrived to hear a great Elder speak.
“Our land of the Big Red Rock was passed over to the many edible creatures who were put here in great numbers in the hot cruel sun to dig and trample our soil. Only the wind has the land’s ashes and dust to fall in vast valleys far under our seas.
Our land is so fragile that the Great Spirits knew that we were to touch it lightly. So they created animals that hop with soft paws barely touching it nightly.
But it is so hard for the greedy to listen when all they do is to need. So great farms are built, trees flattened, fences made for the containment of edible breeds.
But they miss the point of why we are here: that we are all sacred and depend
Upon each other to hold up the Great Living Web; one we now cannot mend.
And so it is sad, my fellow land lovers, that tonight we sit here at vast Uluru
A meeting place of great dignity
A symbol of Nature, of timelessness and spiritual gravity.
While we share a meal, this shameful spread.
A symbol of cultural depravity.”