Hard Light of Day, The: An Artist’s Story of Friendships in Arrernte Country

AUSTRALIAN ART AUSTRALIANA ABORIGINAL

A story of whitefella – blackfella friendship that offers hope for the future Two years after artist Rod Moss arrived in Alice Springs to teach painting, he met a married couple who had set up camp in the gully beside his flat. Over the next twenty-five years, his friendship with Xavier and Petrina Neil and the friendships that grew from it with the families of Whitegate, an Arrernte camp on the outskirts of town, would nourish and challenge Moss beyond his imagining. The Hard Light of Day offers a rare insight into the reality of life in the Centre, from the contours of the MacDonnell Ranges and the textures and sounds of Arrernte culture, to the endemic violence, alcoholism and ill-health that continue to devastate Aboriginal lives. In recalling the relationships and experiences that have shaped his life and work in Alice Springs, Moss unsentimentally reveals the human face behind the statistics and celebrates the enriching, transformative power of friendship. Illustrated with Moss’s evocative paintings and photographs, The Hard Light of Day is an incredible journey into a world never shown in the mainstream media, and an artist’s chronicle of the moments that have inspired him.
xiv, 297 p. : ill. (some col.), ports. ; 24 cm. First Edition. #10523 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, non-fiction, winner, 2011.
Moss, Rod, 1948- | Artists — Australia — Biography. | Artists — NortheRn Territory — Alice Springs. | Australian
The Arrernte (/ˈʌrəndə/) people, sometimes referred to as the Aranda, Arunta or Arrarnta, are a group of Aboriginal Australian peoples who live in the Arrernte lands, at Mparntwe[1][2] (Alice Springs)[a] and surrounding areas of the Central Australia region of the Northern Territory. Many still speak one of the various Arrernte dialects. Some Arrernte live in other areas far from their homeland, including the major Australian cities and overseas.

Arrernte mythology and spirituality focuses on the landscape and The Dreaming. Altjira is the creator being of the Inapertwa that became all living creatures. Tjurunga are objects of religious significance.