The Bird family — an Aboriginal family of artists living in the remote red desert of central Australia — has long used their people’s artistic tradition to preserve a vibrant and visual history of their homeland and ancestors’ stories.
As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the family has also adapted their people’s art practice — called “Altyerre,” or “dreaming” in English — to spread forth and testify of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ to Aboriginal Australian communities in a shared visual language.
Three members of the Bird family came to a media event held Thursday in Salt Lake City for an exhibit showcasing their work.
“Whole communities (in central Australia) have been baptized because (the family) shares” their faith through art, exhibit curator Laura Paulsen Howe said at the event.
Paulsen Howe discovered the Bird family’s artwork years ago and played a key role in helping their artwork arrive in Salt Lake City, where it is now on display at the Church History Museum’s newest exhibit — “From Above: Aboriginal Australian Art from the Bird Family.”
“I feel happy when I do paintings,” Gary Bird Mpetyane of the Bird family told the Deseret News at the media event. That is “why I share my thoughts to my family and friends, (and) why we came here to share stories.”
Likewise, Bird family member Rose Coleena Wallace Nungari said she feels “joy and light” when she paints of her faith in Jesus Christ.
Paulsen Howe shared that learning about the Bird family’s art and its significance was “humbling” for her.
She said all of the pieces serve as “tangible testimonies” and expressed a personal hope that the exhibit’s visitors will likewise exercise faith and humility as they learn about the art and beliefs of the Bird family.
About the art and its heavenly focus and perspective
The Bird family’s art follows the Aboriginal art practice of the Anmatyerr people and is best interpreted as though looking down at a map, where landscapes and stories are painted using bright colors and patterns from an aerial perspective.
Traditionally, the Indigenous art form used by the Bird family focuses on depicting the ancestral stories of their people’s homeland and Anmatyerr heritage.
But the Bird family has expanded their people’s art practice to include semi-abstract representations of the gospel of Jesus Christ and scripture stories.
Most of the Bird family’s paintings depict gospel scenes from an exclusively aerial perspective, while some others combine aerial and ground-level views.
One Bird family painting created by Wallace Nungari, for instance, depicts the tree of life vision recorded in the Book of Mormon.
In this painting, the tree of life is shown from a ground-level perspective, surrounded by “U” shapes, which represent people because of their similarity to the impression left when one sits cross-legged on the sand.
Some “U” shapes are seen facing the tree and painted along a dotted “rod of iron,” which moves toward the tree from the top and bottom.
Others are seen turned away and gathered around a series of concentric circles, which are traditionally used to represent waterholes or places of gathering, but in this case represent “great and spacious” buildings surrounded by “mists of darkness.”
“Looking at these familiar stories from a new perspective has given me food for thought,” Church History Museum director Riley Lorimer told the Deseret News at the exhibit’s media event.
The Bird family’s art has “given me an opportunity to reflect on my own faith,” Lorimer said, “and also feel a great deal of pride that my brothers and sisters in the (Church of Jesus Christ) have created such meaningful and beautiful art to express their faith.”
On converting one heart to whole communities
Today, members of the Bird family in Mulga Bore, Australia, are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints whose faith defines their life and art practice.
But that wasn’t always the case.
The family’s matriarch, Ada Bird Petyarre, was already a prominent and celebrated artist in her community known for creating traditional Aboriginal art when she met Latter-day Saint missionaries in the mid-1990s, according to Lorimer.
Bird Petyarre later joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in her remote community and passed on to her family a strong heritage of art and faith in the Savior, Jesus Christ.
In 2023, several members of the Bird family were sealed in the Sydney Australia Temple. Today, the Bird family finds joy in teaching and testifying of Jesus Christ through gospel-centered art.
As part of an Aboriginal community, the Bird family also holds certain obligations to the land and to extended family that require them to move throughout the year, Lorimer said.
These periodic relocations have often taken the family far from the nearest Latter-day Saint congregation in Alice Springs, Australia. Yet, during these times, the Bird family has continued to worship together, using their art to help teach gospel doctrine to other First Peoples in central Australia.
As a result of their preaching through art, the Bird family has seen whole communities be baptized and connect to the gospel in a visual language they can easily understand.
The Bird family has “used this art to help bring the gospel to First Peoples in Australia, in their own tongue, as is prophesied in scripture,” Lorimer told the Deseret News. “In this case, it’s a visual language, as opposed to a spoken one, but no less powerful.”
Aboriginal language groups in Central Australia are relatively small and could be seen as complicating communication between Indigenous groups in the area.
The Bird family’s art, however, relies on traditional symbols and conventions that are broadly understood by Aboriginal communities and enable them to learn about the gospel in a way that feels relevant and accessible to them.
How to see the works
Interested individuals can see works by nine members of the Bird family in person at the Church History Museum and online at ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
The exhibit at the museum will remain on view through Aug. 1 in the building’s second-floor central and east galleries.
Admission to the museum at 45 N. West Temple St. in Salt Lake City is free, and visitors are welcome to visit the museum and museum store during the following days and hours:
- Monday, Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
- Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
General information regarding holidays and other adjusted hours, plus parking and other items, can be found here.