William Ricketts (1898-1993) was an Australian sculptor and potter who developed a spiritual bond with the Aboriginal people of Central Australia. The time he spent with them, between 1949 and 1960 inspired his works in Potter’s Sanctuary (now known as William Ricketts Sanctuary).
Born in Richmond, Victoria, in 1898, William settled permanently in Mount Dandenong, Victoria, in 1934. Although not trained as a potter and never technically superior (his works, large and small, frequently exhibit cracking), the power of his vision of a modern Australia that embraces Aboriginal spirituality and respect for the natural world was his general message throughout his artworks.
From 1949 to 1960 he made frequent trips into Central Australia to live with Pitjantjatjara and Arrernte Aboriginal Australians, whose traditions and culture inspired his sculpture. He was not an Aboriginal by blood but considered himself adopted by the Pitjantjatjara nation. He left many of his central Australian works at Pitchi Richi near Alice Springs – a bird sanctuary run by his friend Leo Corbet – as he considered the landscape integral to these sculptures.
From 1912 to 1920 Ricketts developed skills in playing violin, crafting jewellery, and clay modeling. In 1934 he started his major artistic work, creating the sculpture park now named William Ricketts Sanctuary. He worked on this project until his death in 1993. In the 1970s, he spent two years in India, mostly at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram spiritual center in Puducherry, developing spiritual empathy with Indian people and knowledge of their philosophy.
To many, including academics such as Marcia Langton, Bruno David and Mitchell Rolls, Ricketts is considered a controversial figure with his beliefs and his sculptures steeped in racism, exploitation and primitivism. Ricketts is viewed to have a white savior complex and is quoted as believing he had been 'called to the defence of the aborigines and the continent' and that 'my creator worked through the Australian aborigine to get hold of me'. Ricketts compares his own personal distress over the environment to the suffering of the Aboriginal People. His trips to central Australia were viewed as controversial and filled with misunderstanding and tensions with Ricketts having incorrect preconceived notions of the roles of the Anangu people.
A further controversy is all the sculptures in the Dandenong ranges sanctuary are based in real aborigines from central Australia. One issue is displacement and treating a particular group of central Australian Aboriginal people as representative of all aboriginal people, with no independent integrity afforded to specific people and culture. Further there's the issue of how this park and these sculptures should be viewed by members of the aboriginal groups who they are members of and local aboriginal groups who's country the sculptures sit on, in accordance with traditional law and culture.
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