Kaparlgoo Blue: On the Adoption of Laundry Blue Pigment into the Visual Culture of Western Arnhem Land, Australia

Abstract

It has been argued that laundry blue (whitener) was introduced into western Arnhem Land in the second half of the 1920s by missionaries, where it was used by Aboriginal people in rock art and on a variety of objects. Recent examination of museum collections acquired from the Northern Territory Native Industrial Mission at Kapalga in today’s Kakadu National Park, shows that the introduction of laundry blue into local Aboriginal artistic practices was earlier, around 1900. We discuss two examples of objects painted with laundry blue, a fibre basket and a bark belt, as well as broader ethnographic evidence relating to the significance of the color blue. We argue that the use of laundry blue is not only the result of access to an exotic new color but also has links to existing cultural beliefs.