Aboriginal Art from the Ebes Collection

"Every picture is a story; and every story a picture."

This is the Australian gallery owner Hank Ebes's succinct description of the fascinating Aboriginal world of images.

He first came across it in the early 1970s when he went into the Australian bush and met the country's indigenous people.

Due in no small part to his efforts, today works from remote regions of Australia are a recognised part of the international contemporary art scene.

In the exhibition Dreamtime, Arken presents more than 100 Aboriginal paintings from Ebes's private collection.

Once you set out to breaking the codes in the Aboriginal pictures, the reward comes in the form of a number of dramatic stories that speak of love, life and death, the quest for food, the rules of conduct between members of the group, and not least of the group's and the individual's relation to the ancestral beings that are an integral part of the identity of the Aboriginals and the history of the country.

All the stories take place in the mythological Dreamtime during which, according to Aboriginal belief, the world was created: This was when the spirits of the ancestors awoke.

They founded the law regulating conduct between people and created the landscape and all things living.

Thereupon the spirits lay down to rest in the landscape,