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Previous Exhibitions - Japingka Gallery Australia
Special Event and Exhibition opening
In a break with many years of tradition (and after what has become an institution with art lovers and collectors) of Friday night Exhibition openings, Japingka Gallery is mounting its next major Exhibition of artworks from the extremely remote Spinifex Community on a Saturday afternoon. This reflects the remarkable achievement of the women Artists of Spinifex who will be attending (as finalists) the prestigious WA Indigenous Art Awards at AGWA on the Friday night prior.
The unusual Saturday afternoon opening affords the women the opportunity to attend the official opening of the brand new Spinifex Arts Project Exhibition opening along with several of the men Artists who will also be undertaking the long trip down to Fremantle for the Japingka Gallery opening. This will be a unique opportunity to meet a large group Spinifex Arts Project Artists. Those Artists who will be attending the opening include, Estelle Hogan, Carlene West, Tjaduwa Woods, Simon Hogan, Fred Grant and Byron Brookes.
In conjunction with Spinifex Arts Project, Japingka Gallery is pleased to present exciting new works from the artists of Tjuntjuntjara community. This is one of Western Australia's most remote townships. Located in the Great Victorian Desert, it is accessed via 660 kilometres of dirt roads to the east of Kalgoorlie.
The community has traditional links to lands affected by the Maralinga atomic testing programme. In recent decades the people, displaced in the 1950s, have settled back on their country. Using painting as part of their documentation, they were granted Native Title rights in 2001 for an area of 55,000 square kilometres. The community closely manages the country under its stewardship, with regular maintenance trips into outlying locations, led by custodians and elders. The paintings, with their great compositional strength and colour, reflect the custodial and kinship ties that bind the people to their lands.
Last year the Spinifex men were selected as finalists in the inaugural WA Indigenous Art Awards hosted by the Art Gallery of Western Australia. This is the biggest and most prestigious Indigenous art prize in Australia. This year, the women have been selected as finalists.
Both men and women artists will be present at Japingka’s opening, giving guests a chance to speak to them about their paintings.
The opening, to accommodate the artists’ presence, will be held on Saturday 25 July at 2.30pm. The exhibition closes on 26 August 2009.
The exhibition opens on Saturday 25th July 2009 at 2.30pm and remains open daily until 24th June 2009
For further information, please contact Ian Plunkett (Gallery Director) on (08) 9335 8265 or via email on japingka@iinet.net.au.
Gallery Hours: Mon - Fri: 10.00am - 5.30pm, Sat & Sun: 12.00pm - 5.00pm. FREE ENTRY.
Exhibitions can be viewed online at: www.japingka.com.au.
Japingka’s autumn exhibitions are both iconically Western Australian. ‘Old-timers’ from the remote Wangkatjungka community in the far north Kimberley are showing alongside more recently established yet highly accomplished artists from the coastal Pilbara region.
In Gallery1, the Wangkatjungka artists’ exhibition Desert Rains is exuberant with lush, fresh colours. In October 2008, as the artists settled down to paint for their exhibition, early seasonal rain began to fall. David Wroth, Japingka’s director reported, “Everyone’s minds began to wander to their ancestral country as they took up their brushes. In conversation, they wondered if the rain was reaching deep into their country, if it was filling the waterholes. They wondered if their country was healthy or ailing.”
Most of the Wangkatjungka artists have been living away from their country for nearly sixty years. As exiles from the Great Sandy Desert, the old people revisit their homelands in their thoughts and in their paintings. This exhibition sings with colours of hope. Inspired by the rains, a sense of rejuvenation and exuberance has emerged from the intense interaction between memory and canvas resulting in vividly coloured collaborative and individual works.
In Gallery2, artists from Yinjaa-Barni Art in Roebourne in Western Australia’s Pilbara district speak a different pictorial language to represent their country. Allery Sandy and Wendy Darby paint the land from an aerial perspective, their works giving the sensation of flying over the landscape and seeing the meandering watercourses etched into the red earth. Clifton Mack has a highly individual visual vocabulary to represent his intimate view of country, while Pansy Sambo has a more European painterly approach in her representations of the bush and flowers of the area.
The Yinjaa-Barni artists group have been painting and exhibiting together for several years now and Clifton Mack, Allery Sanders, Maudie Jerrold and Wendy Darby have, between them, taken out many prizes from the annual Cossack Art Awards. Patricia Floyd, Yinjaa-Barni Art Centre Coordinator, says: “Painting has engendered a great sense of self-worth and pride within the community. The older members paint what is close to their hearts - their country, their culture, plants of the region. They are now teaching the younger members through painting and story-telling, particularly about the plants and their traditional uses.”
The exhibitions open on Friday 15 May at 6.30pm and continue until 24 June 2009.
Gallery 1: NYIRRIPI AND YUENDUMU ARTISTS
Gallery 2: INDIGENOUS GLASSWORKS - THE BLUE OCHRE PROJECT
Paul Sanders, director of Glassmob Studio near Aubury, says of the Blue Ochre Project: “This is a world first, for Indigenous artists to work directly with hot glass in such an immediate process. The tools are basic and the process very hands-on. We only add the furnace and kiln technology. It is like pouring out honey and watching the artist craft a coolamon or shield as though using a butter knife.”
In this her premier exhibition, Indigenous artist Rachel Malthouse has created innovative glassworks by working hot glass as it is poured in a molten flow from the furnaces. The process itself is thousands of years old, dating back to Mesopotamia and Egypt, but the Blue Ochre Project is unique in using high quality Australian crystal glass. This is heated in the furnace to 1200 degrees C and then poured onto a steel surface where the artist has a timeframe of only 5 – 10 minutes to respond to the poured glass and create the artwork. It is an immediate and spontaneous process. If the interaction between artist and material doesn’t gel in that time, the piece has to be scrapped.
While the creative time is nerve-wrackingly short, the follow up time is long. It takes 4 to 5 days for the glass to be cooled and finished, a process that de-stresses and stabilises the sculpted pieces. Crystal glass has distinctive sheen and refractive qualities, and in this exhibition the artists use clear as well as obsidian black and gold hues.
The forms Rachel Malthouse creates are her interpretation of traditional artefacts from her homeland near Mareeba on the Atherton Tablelands in far north Queensland. The designs are taken from clan motifs that were applied to personal artefacts and shields, which were considered to have protective qualities for their owners. These traditional forms have been passed down to the artist through her mother’s family. Rachel’s mother is the Queensland artist Jennifer Herd.
Working alongside Rachel is Gay Baker who exemplifies the diversity of the glass-making process with her richly coloured forms displaying complex patterns representing bushtucker and seed motifs.
Also showing at Japingka in Gallery 1 are new works from the remote Tanami Desert communities of Nyirripi and Yuendumu. The exhibition is presented in association with Warlangkurlangu Artists.
Gloria Morales of Warlangkurlagu Artists, says: “The artists from Nyirripi are proud to show their work and to get recognition for it - it is important for them. There are three and sometimes four generations working together, so it’s a regenerative process for maintaining knowledge. The artists want an art centre of their own, as art becomes an increasingly important part of their community.”
Nyirripi is a small community, 160 Km west from the Tanami Road at the Yuendumu turnoff. Fieldworkers at Warlukurlangu Art centre at Yuendumu make weekly trips out to the community to collect new paintings, provide the next round of materials as well as give professional advice to the artists.
Rachel Malthouse will attend the opening of her premier exhibition at Japingka Gallery at 6.30pm on Friday 20th February. The exhibitions close on 31st March.
Preview both Exhibitions at www.japingka.com.au
KUDDITJI KNGWARREYE Exhibition 68 4 April – 1 May 2008
At a time when Aboriginal art is being closely monitored in its role crossing between two cultures, Japingka Gallery is exhibiting the work of Kudditji Kngwarreye, an artist that bridges cultural boundaries with his contemporary interpretation of ancestral stories. Capturing the changing moods and seasons of his desert country with sometimes bright, sometimes subtle blocks of colour, his paintings sing in a way that is reminiscent of both Rothko and later works of his elder sister, Emily Kngwarreye.
Kudditji Kngwarreye is a senior man of the Eastern Anmatyerre language group from Alhalkere on the Utopia homelands, about 270 kms north east of Alice Springs. Kudditji (pronounced Kubbitji), was born around 1928. He is the younger brother of renowned Utopia artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye.
As a young man Kudditji worked as a stockman on cattle stations around his traditional country, and took other occassional jobs including working as a gold miner. He began painting in 1986, after the Central Desert art movement that began with the work of senior men at Papunya, began spreading out to other desert communities.
Kuddtji Kngwarreye paints his traditional country, the country for which he is a custodian, around Boundary Bore on the Utopia homelands. Significant throughout this country are the Emu Dreaming sites, where major men's initiation ceremonies are performed. The “Emu Dreaming” is one of Kudditji’s inherited ancestral totems, and is regularly referred to in his paintings.
Kudditji Kngwarreye’s early style consisted of symmetrically dotted paintings depicting the Emu Dreaming sites and ceremonies associated with Men's Business. During the mid 1990’s Kudditji began to experiment, replacing his previous fine dotting style with one that used densely applied paint to create broad sweeps of colour on the canvas. This imagery created something similar to the western landscape plane, and the paintings were romantic images of his country, concentrating on colour and form of the landscape. Strong images were being created of the intense skies of the desert rainy season and the extreme heat of high summer. These innovative paintings were slow to be accepted, and the artist returned to the more popular style of his finely dotted paintings.
In 2003 Kudditji began to exhibit the extraordinary, saturated colour paintings that have seen his reputation grow nationally and internationally. The new paintings, in fact, have several styles, and Kudditji has explored size of canvas as well as form in these intense, beautiful works. A sense of immense space can be felt in the "My Country" paintings, where massive blocks of stippled colour are laid alongside each other, sometimes using only two colours, while in other paintings a quilt of juxtaposed colours produces a landscape effect. These paintings hold close connections to the later paintings of his elder sister Emily Kame Kngwarreye, who was one of the great innovators in contemporary desert art.
Kuddtji Kngwarreye has been represented in major international exhibitions and has gained world wide recognition for his traditional depictions of his ancestral Dreamings.
Kudditji’s Story for artworks
Kudditji Kngwarreye paints aerial views of his county that reflect the changing seasons as well as the areas of spiritual significance.
Kudditji uses a heavily loaded paint brush to sweep broadly across the canvas in stages, similar to the western landscape plane, the reds and oranges of the shimmering summer heat and the depth of the sky in the Wet season These ground-breaking paintings express Kudditji’s extensive knowledge and love of his country in a way never seen before.
Solo Exhibitions
2006: My Country, Japingka Gallery Perth
2006: Masterwork, Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne
2006: Kudditji Kngwarreye: New Paintings, Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne
2005: Waterhole Aboriginal Art, Danks Street, Sydney.
2005: New Paintings, Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne
2005: Colours in Country, Art Mob, Hobart, Tasmania
2004: Waterhole Aboriginal Art, Sofitel Wentworth Hotel Exhibition, Sydney.
2004: My Country, Japingka Gallery Perth
2004: My Country, New Paintings, Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne
2003: New Paintings, Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne
1992: Tjukurrpa, Museum fur Volkerkunde, Basel
Group Exhibitions
2005: Big Country, Gallery Gondwana, Alice Springs
2005: Fresh from the Central Desert, Canberra Grammar School, Canberra
2004: Two Senior Men, Art Mob Gallery, Tasmania
2004: Australian Exhibition Centre, Chicago
2004: Heartbeat - Living Country, Wentworth Hotel, Sydney
2004: Spirit of Colour, Depot Gallery, Sydney
2002: The Contemporaries, Contemporary Artspace, Brisbane
1992: Tjukurrpa, Museum fur Volkerkunde, Basel, Switzerland
1991: Central Australian Aboriginal Art and Craft Exhibition, Araluen Centre, Alice Springs
1990: Art Dock, Contemporary Art from Australia, Noumea, New Caledonia
Collections
Araluen Art Centre, Alice Springs
R. M. Barokh Antiques, Los Angeles, California
Various private collections
“The Stockman and the Medicine Man” - JACK DALE and BILL WHISKEY TJAPALTJARRI
On Friday 31 August at 6.30pm, an exhibition of major works by two highly regarded senior lawmen and renowned artists, Jack Dale and Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri, will open at Japingka Gallery. This is the first time these two great painters, both in their 80s, have been shown together. Health permitting, Jack Dale will travel from his home in Derby for the opening.
Jack Dale, often referred to as the “Great Old Man of the Kimberley”, and Bill Whiskey, a renowned Medicine Man or traditional healer, both began painting late in life. In their highly acclaimed and individually unique works, both draw deeply on a wealth of traditional and spiritual knowledge of their respective countries.
Jack Dale, is one of the only surviving custodians of the great art sites of the Wandjina spirits of his country near Iminji in the remote central Kimberley region of Western Australia. Born at Mt House station to an Aboriginal mother and violent Scottish father, Jack witnessed many of the early atrocities perpetrated against his people. After his father died, having “killed himself on grog”, Jack returned to his maternal family and was brought into traditional Ngarinyin Law by his maternal grandfather at Lady Forrest Ranges, King Leopold. He went on to lead a remarkable life that bridged both cultures: he was a highly regarded head stockman and bushman as well as a respected tribal elder and lawman.
Jack began painting in the 1990s, when he was into his 70s, working with traditional ochre pigments. He uses his extensive cultural knowledge to record aspects of the Wandjina Dreaming sites of his people. This exhibition shows some of the finest of these grand ancestral spirits. Jack is assisted in his work by his wife, artist Biddy Dale, and other close members of his family, including his daughter Edna Dale. Today Jack spends his time between the Kimberley town of Derby and the community at Iminji on his traditional lands.
Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri, born in the 1920s at Pirupa Akla, is a Pitjantjatjara elder and traditional bush healer. His dynamic canvases record traditional rockhole sites near Pirupa, to the west of Ayers Rock. He also depicts the tract of country he later travelled through to Areyonga and the Haasts Bluff mission, where he worked as cook for the contract fencers and mustering crew. It was at this time that he began to be called Whiskers, due to his long white beard, a name that later evolved to Whiskey.
Bill Whiskey has only been painting since 2004, in which time his work has doubled in price. Most canvases are sold before they reach the walls, an unprecedented success, even in the Indigenous art world. Director of Japingka, Ian Plunkett, says: “Most of Whiskey’s canvases are sold before they reach the walls, an unprecedented success, even in the Indigenous art world.” His paintings, executed in the traditional dot style, exude a positive energy, reflecting his character – bold, subtly coloured and strong in spirit.
This important exhibition shouldn’t be missed by anyone interested in Indigenous art, or for those wanting to be introduced to it at its highest level.
The exhibition will be on display from 1 September to 5 October 2007. The gallery is open daily.
For further information, please contact Ian Plunkett (Gallery Director)
on (08) 9335 8265 or via email on japingka@iinet.net.au..
Gallery Hours: Mon - Fri: 10.00am - 5.30pm, Sat: 10.00am - 5.00pm, Sun: 12.00pm - 5.00pm. FREE ENTRY.
Exhibitions can be viewed online at: www.japingka.com.au.
Following on from the World Record price of just over $1,000,000 for an Australian Indigenous painting achieved at the recent Lawson Menzies Auction by the late, great Utopia Artist, Emily Kngwarreye, Japingka Gallery is featuring an Exhibition of new works from this highly regarded remote Community. The Artists of Utopia Exhibition showcases not only the work of Senior Artists who were contemporaries of Emily, but also artworks from the next generation from this remarkably talented Community.
Artists of Utopia is just one of an unprecedented three new exhibitions that will open at the same time in Japingka Gallery on Friday 15th June in Fremantle. These three Exhibitions will give viewers a real sense of the breadth and depth of styles and talent that is inherent in the Indigenous Fine Art Movement. The paintings feature styles and mediums from very different regions of Australia. From traditional ochre pigment paintings to the modern synthetic polymer paintings.
In Artists of Utopia twenty four artists from the uniquely named Utopia Homelands in Central Australia are exhibiting their wide-raging approach to painting. Recognised for their success at handing down the traditions through the generations, the age range of these artists is staggering. Polly Ngale (91) and Ally Kemarre (86) are amongst the elders, while younger artists like Janelle Stockman (30) are just starting out on their careers.
The exhibition highlights the continuing development of a major group of painters from one of the best known Central Desert art communities. Artists at Utopia have produced some of the most innovative and diverse artworks to come out of Australia’s heartlands. As senior artists pass on there are constantly new artists prepared to come forward to maintain the quality and integrity of art from their region.
In gallery2 Lisa Michl’s first exhibition in Western Australia will showcase the latest works from this north Queensland artist. Lisa’s connections are through her mother and grandmother’s side to the Kokoberrin language group of central west coast of Cape York Peninsula. Her paintings reflect the rhythms and traditional lifestyles of Kokoberrin culture. Lisa will attend the exhibition opening on Friday 15 June at 6.30pm.
Texas Downs, the colourfully named cattle station in the East Kimberley, has produced more than its fair share of successful artists. Father and daughter Churchill Cann and Charlene Carrington have combined in this exhibition to paint the history, landscape and traditional sites of Texas Downs, their home country. They are joined by Phyllis Thomas from the adjacent Purnululu (Bungle Bungles) region.
The exhibitions will be on display from 15th June to 13th July, and the gallery is open daily.
For further information, please contact Ian Plunkett (Gallery Director) on (08) 9335 8265 or via email on japingka@iinet.net.au.
Gallery Hours: Mon - Fri: 10.00am-5.30pm Sat: 10.00am–5.00pm Sun: 12.am–5.00pm.
FREE ENTRY.
Exhibitions can be viewed online at: www.japingka.com.au.
Linda Syddick Napaltjarri & Lorna Napurrula Fencer
Japingka Gallery is exhibiting two of the great innovators of Western Desert Art- Linda Syddick Napaltjarri and Lorna Napurrula Fencer. The exhibition opens on Friday 4th May at 6.30pm with the 2006 Telstra Painting Award artist, Linda Syddick attending, and will run until 8th June.
Linda Syddick Napaltjarri is rare amongst Pintupi artists for incorporating figures, whether they are Dreaming ancestors or spirit figures of relatives or historical figures, into her paintings of traditional country. Her unique style has won her national recognition in the Blake Prize for Religious Art as well as the NATSIAA Telstra Awards for Indigenous Art.
Linda left the desert around Lake McKay with her family when she was eight, to walk the 350 kilometre journey east to the mission settlement of Haasts Bluff. She is family to some of the famous artistic names of the Papunya Tula era- father Shorty Lankata, uncles Uta Uta Tjungala and Nosepeg Tjapurrula, cousin Ronnie Tjampitjinpa.
Linda began her own painting career 20 years ago. It is the oral tradition of Linda Syddick’s nomadic Pintupi heritage, with its rich storytelling history, that comes through in her wonderful paintings. “When she’s painting, Linda becomes the people in the painting. She speaks with them, and records their story. She goes back in time and place to the events that she is painting about.”
A tribute exhibiton to the late, great artist Lorna Napurrula Fencer (1923- 2006) is being shown in gallery2. This is also a celebration of the close relationship between Lorna and Japingka Gallery, and includes works from the last year of the painter’s life. The artist was named in this year’s list of top 50 collectible artists in Australia, and is in major collections including the Australian National Gallery.
Napurrula is recognised as an artist who uses colour with great impact, carefully considering the effect as she lays down the paint on canvas. Her large epic paintings created in the eighth decade of her life were final and compelling statements about the power of the great Warlpiri stories that she painted for over twenty years.
Lorna was identified with the Napurrula- Nakamarra creation stories from her birth place Yumurrpa. These ceremonial stories re-enact the myths of the Ancestors who pulled out the first Yarla, or bush potato, from the earth around the underground water source at Yurmurrpa. Embedded in the swirling shapes of the bush potato leaves are the “U” shapes of the Napurrula and Nakamarra women, who remain the custodians and the beneficiaries of their great Ancestors’ achievements.
When the Wangkatjungka people who lived in and around the remote Kimberley region which later became known as The Canning Stock Route first came into contact with the Kartiya (white people) in 1906, little did they know of the momentous chain of events that this inauspicious First Contact would set in motion. The misunderstandings, resettlement, killings and hardship came full circle in 1996 when all of the people from the region came together to paint the historic, monumental “Ngurrara” collaborative canvas to underpin their Native Title claim.
This historic canvas is echoed in the new collaborative works that document the innate connection between the Wangkatjungka people and their country and form the basis of the new “Wangkatjungka – Mapping Country” Exhibition at Japingka Gallery. Each individual artist has painted the waterholes and landmarks of the part of the country for which they are the traditional custodian.
When a large group of Wangkatjungka people turned up on the southern boundaries of Christmas Creek station sometime around 1940, word quickly spread that more families had arrived from the desert homelands. It had been a 200 km walk across saltpan country on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert.
The group had settled at a bore while they waited for their countrymen, stockmen on the station, to make contact. While they camped there many of the people became ill from some mystery whitefella disease that attached to the station country. The epidemic proved fatal to many of the old people.
It was the children that survived, and were brought into the life on the station by their relatives or other clan members. As elders, Willie Kew, George Tuckerbox and Myuapu Elsie Thomas can recall the great exodus they participated in. Others like Peter Goodijie can recall first contact with the white stockmen on the Canning Stock Route around 1930.
All these old people vividly recall their lives growing up on the ancestral lands, moving between waterholes with their extended families, learning the secrets of the country. As the elders and the senior artists of Wangkatjungka community, 120 kms S-E of the Kimberley town of Fitzroy Crossing, they began recording their stories on canvas in the 1990’s.
Now a selection of their large shared canvases can be seen at Japingka Gallery, in an exhibition entitled Wangkatjungka- Mapping Country. Senior artists from the community are scheduled to attend the opening on Friday 23 March at 6.30pm.
Wangkatjungka- Mapping Country- Gallery1 Mar 23, 2007 – Apr 27, 2007 Paintings from Wangkatjungka artists who left their desert homelands in the 1940s and traveled north along the Canning Stock Route or walked cross-country towards the Kimberley cattle stations. Collaborative paintings recreate the waterholes, the seasonal changes to country, and family links between clan groups.
ARTISTS OF WATIYAWANU
For further information, please contact Ian Plunkett (Gallery Director) on (618) 9335 8265 or via email on japingka@iinet.net.au.
Gallery Hours: Mon - Fri: 10.00am-5.30pm Sat: 10.00am–5.00pm Sun: 12.am–5.00pm. FREE ENTRY.
Exhibitions can be viewed online at: www.japingka.com.au.
Japingka Gallery is launching its exciting new Exhibition programme for 2007 with two outstanding shows that
celebrate the strength and depth of talent from the Northern Territory. The 2006 Telstra Award winning artist, Ngioa
Pollard is featured in the Watiyawanu Exhibition. Senior artists Ngoia Pollard Napaltjarri and Topsy Peterson from
Mt Liebig (Amunturrngu) will attend the opening night, along with long time Community Art Coordinator Glenis
Wilkins. Many of the artists will be featured in an exhibition held in the Royal Palace in Copenhagen in 2007.
The 2nd Exhibition features the simple, colourful and beautiful landscape paintings of the Imangara Community in the Barkley Tablelands
of the Northern Territory.
Both of these exceptional Exhibitions open on the same night at 6.30pm on Friday, 16th February and continue until 16th March, 2007.
Gallery 1 Watiyawanu Artists of Amunturrngu
Gallery 2 Close and Far Away - Alyawarra artists of Imangara Community
“The recent emergence of great art from Mt Liebig has been a long time coming. For the first 30 years of the Desert painting movement,
Amunturrngu – as the 1275m Mt Liebig is known locally – was bypassed by Pintupi people on their way out of the horrors of Papunya
to their own country around the outstations at Kintore and Kiwirrkura.
But Mt Liebig has actually been a key art site in all the histories. The recent “Colliding Worlds” exhibition from the Melbourne Museum
contained photos from a 1932 expedition showing a couple of cheeky 8 year olds – one Johnny Warangkula and one Mick Namarari.
Both went on to become leaders of Papunya Tula art. But in 1932, they were living around the government bore at Mt Liebig. Later, in
1977, John Kean of Papunya Tula Artists would recall “the creatively charged personalities” of the artists he met at a painting camp at Mt
Liebig in 1977, and reckoned they had the “greatest passion and authority” of any he saw during a 200 kilometre desert trip. The artists in
question were Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi, Uta Uta Tjangala and Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi. Heavy hitters indeed, from the days when
only the men painted Aboriginal art.
Family were allowed to do a bit of dotting, though. So it’s no surprise to find that Wentja Napaltjarri, one of the women stars at Watiyawanu
today, was Shorty Lungkata’s daughter. She – along with Luritja women Lilly Kelly Napangardi and Ngoia Pollard Napaltjarri (winner of
the top Telstra Prize in 2006) – developed into serious, story-based artists under the tutelage of another women, Glenis Wilkins.
Glenis is a stayer – arriving at Mt Liebig to run the store 15 years ago and transferring her loyalty to Watiyawanu Artists late in the 90s.
She took the artists to major indigenous art events and encouraged them to delve into their grandfathers’ and fathers’ stories. Perhaps
she was helped by the fact that the mountain itself - Amunturrngu – is actually the site of a major Woman’s Dreaming, the Willy Wagtail,
who, in legend, defeats the Devil Woman who goes around stealing babies. The hill itself looks after women and children.
Specialist curator Neil Murphy describes the Mt Liebig style he admires so much as “the dense soft dotting of the Luritja, often in only a
single colour, but laden with sensibility and story to form a magnificent background to imminent revelation”.
Ironically, men had found it hard to emerge in this women’s world. But Pitjanjatjara medicine man, Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri has done so
spectacularly at 86, and other younger men are following in his tracks. A new men’s painting room is under construction for them.
For this is a disciplined community – a Tidy Town, one of the first to adopt Opal petrol to stamp out sniffing, and a place where houses
are fixed up once a year, not allowed to fall apart. Culture and discipline go hand in hand. With them goes confidence – as a result,
Watiyawanu art is bound for a wider audience, which will include the Royal palace in Denmark, and exhibitions in Singapore and Japan
this year.”
Jeremy Eccles 2007
For further information, please contact Ian Plunkett (Director) on (08) 9335 8265 or via email on japingka@iinet.net.au.
Gallery Hours: Mon - Fri: 10.00am-5.30pm Sat: 10.00am–5.00pm Sun: 12.am–5.00pm. FREE ENTRY.
Exhibitions can be viewed online at: www.japingka.com.au.Japingka Gallery is completing its highly successful 2006 Exhibition programme with two outstanding Exhibitions that celebrate the diversity of talent from the Central Desert.
Gallery 1: Warlpiri Artists of Yuendumu
Gallery 2: Grandmother & Granddaughter
Communities of the Central Desert ebb and flow with the vagaries of desert life. Yuendumu is one that has a relatively long history. Formed in the 1940’s as a government ration station for Warlpiri people from the Tanami, it had such an influx of people that many had to be forcibly moved on to the new community further north. Yuendumu flourished as one of the larger desert communities. In response to the success of the art movement that started further west at Papunya in the early 1970’s, Yuendumu set up its own art centre, Warlukurlangu, in 1986.
Yuendumu leapt to international prominence with the famous “Yuendumu Doors” which started life as humble doors on the Community’s School, but after traditional stories and Dreamings were painted on the doors by the Senior Men and Elders to remind the school children of their rich heritage, the doors became iconic art pieces in their own right which symbolised the transition from traditional to the modern era.
In gallery 2 at Japingka the exhibition “Grandmother & Granddaughter” highlights the work of the late, great Minnie Pwerle, with a series of small paintings by the artist on the theme of Women’s Body painting. Her granddaughter Teresa Purla exhibits works that celebrate her grandmother’s country, and also develops the imagery of Fire Dreaming within that landscape.
Both exhibitions open on Friday, 24th November, 2006 and both will run through the holiday period to January 14, 2007 and the gallery is open 7 days a week.
Luminaries of the Desert Oct 13, 2006 - Nov 19, 2006 Luminaries showcases work by some of the most significant artists of the Central and Western Deserts, and introduces a few rising stars. The painters are diverse in their styles, but the impact of their art is universally profound. Luminaries suggests both the exuberance of the artists work as well as the high esteem in which the artists are regarded.
Art of the Spinifex People
Dispossessed from their lands in the 1950's by the Maralinga Atomic tests and subsequently moved on to missions including Cundeelee and Warburton during the 1950's and 1960's, the Spinifex People have never lost contact with their land. In an attempt to recover their ancestral country, they began documenting family connections to waterholes and hunting grounds, and custodianship of ceremonial sites. Paintings showing these links formed part of their successful land title claim in 2001. The people have continued using their painting to reinforce their traditional culture and its deep roots into their homelands in the Great Victorian Desert. In association with the Spinifex Arts Project, this is the second Community exhibition at Japingka Gallery.
Jock Mosquito
Jock Mosquito worked with Rover Thomas on ceremonial boards for the Kuril Kuril corroboree in the 1970s. Now having had a stroke, and at the age of 62, Jock is having his first West Australian solo exhibition. He has pared down his style to a minimal approach, and focused on landscapes rather than the more intricate desert designs of his earlier work. These Kimberley paintings, often using the rich colours of local bush ochres, are an extraordinary achievement.
Jack Dale - A Kimberley History
Senior Kimberley artist Jack Dale provides an artistic snapshot of life in the West Kimberley since the 1920s. Jack paints his memories of working bullock teams, Afghan camel traders, life in the stock camps, Aboriginal incarceration, and most of all his detailed knowledge of Ngarinyin Dreaming sites of the Wandjina spirit. We are pleased to announce that Jack will be attending the opening of this seminal exhibition.
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