My Country – Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

Exhibition: ‘My Country, I Still Call Australia Home: Contemporary Art from Black Australia’ at The Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), Brisbane

Exhibition dates: 1st June – 7th October 2013

Tony Albert (Australia, Queensland b. 1981)
Girramay people
Sorry
2008
Found kitsch objects applied to vinyl letters
The James C Sourris, AM, Collection. Purchased 2008 with funds from James C Sourris through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

R U SORRY?

Do you feel FORGIVEN?

What do I have to feel sorry for
I only arrived here yesterday

I FORGIVE you for all the SADNESS and SORROW that COLONISATION has CAUSED

You gutless wonder

GUILT, GUILTY, GUILTLESS, GUILELESS, GUTLESS

The persistence of memory – how the past lingers and subverts

MEMORY – inflicting more DAMAGE on the already DAMAGED

(TIME) to MOVE ON… Nothing to see here

Marcus

.
Many thankx to the The Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Bindi Cole (Australian, Victoria b. 1975)
Wathaurung people
I forgive you
2012
Emu feathers on MDF board
Purchased 2012. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
© Bindi Cole 2012. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney, 2013

Arthur Koo-ekka Pambegan Jr (Australian, Queensland 1936-2010)
Wik-Mungkan people
Flying Fox Story Place
2002-2003
Carved milkwood (Alstonia muellerana) with synthetic polymer paint and natural pigments
Commissioned 2002 with funds from the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Ron Yunkaporta (Australian, Queensland b. 1956)
Wik-Ngathan people
Thuuth thaa’ munth (Law poles)
2002-2003
Cottontree wood (Hibiscus tiliaceus), ibis feathers, bush string with natural pigments
Commissioned 2002 with funds from the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Jennifer Mye Jr. (Australian, Queensland b. 1984)
Meriam Mir people
Basket with short handles
2011
Woven polypropylene tape (blue with Australian flag motif)
Purchased 2011 with funds from Thomas Bradley through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation

Ken Thaiday Sr (Australian, Queensland b. 1950)
Meriam Mir people
Symbol of the Torres Strait
2003
Plywood, synthetic polymer paint, feathers, black bamboo, plastic tubing, fishing line
Purchased 2004 with funds from Corrs Chambers Westgarth through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Dinny McDinny (Australian, Northern Territory c. 1927-2003)
Marnbaliya people, Balyarrinji skin group
Kalajangu – Rainbow Dreaming came through Marnbaliya Country
2003
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
Purchased 2004
Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Sally Gabori (Australian, Queensland b.c. 1924)
Kaiadilt people
Dibirdibi Country
2008
Synthetic polymer paint on linen
Purchased 2008 with funds from Margaret Mittelheuser, AM, and Cathryn Mittelheuser, AM, through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
© Sally Gabori 2008. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney, 2013

Wakartu Cory Surprise (Australian, Western Australia 1929-2011)
Walmajarri people
Mimpi
2011
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
Purchased 2012
Queensland Art Gallery
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
© Wakartu Cory Surprise 2011. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney, 2013

Ruby Tjangawa Williamson (Australian, South Australia b. 1940)
Pitjantjatjara people
Nita Williamson (Australian, South Australia b. 1963)
Suzanne Armstrong (Australian, South Australia b. 1980)
Pitjantjatjara people (Collaborating artists)
Ngayuku ngura (My country) Puli murpu (Mountain range)
2012
Synthetic polymer paint on linen
Purchased 2012 with funds from Margaret Mittelheuser, AM, and Cathryn Mittelheuser, AM, through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Ruby Tjangawa Williamson is a senior law woman committed to fostering traditional culture. She began painting in 2000. Her distinctive works are acclaimed and she is regarded as one of Amata’s most significant artists. Williamson also weaves tjanpi (desert grass) baskets and makes punu (wood carvings) with pokerwork designs.

My Country, I Still Call Australia Home: Contemporary Art from Black Australia is the Gallery’s largest exhibition of contemporary art by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists to date. The exhibition examines the strengths of the Gallery’s holdings and explores three central themes – presenting Indigenous views of history (My history), responding to contemporary politics and experiences (My life), and illustrating connections to place (My country).

From paintings and sculptures about ancestral epicentres to photographs and moving-image works that interrogate and challenge the established history of Australia, to installations responding to political and social situations affecting all Australians, the thread that binds these artists is their collective desire to share their experiences and tell their stories.

“Drawing on three decades of research, collaboration and Collection development, My Country, I Still Call Australia Home highlights the connection Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists have with country as both ‘land’ and ‘nation’, and features over 300 works by 116 artists from every state and territory,” Mr Saines said.

“Curated by Bruce McLean, a Wirri / Birri-Gubba man with heritage from the central coast of Qoeensland and the Gallery’s Curator of Indigenous Australian Art, the exhibition gives voice to artists who investigate historical and contemporary political and social issues. Many of these issues and works are confronting and controversial, and we are proud of the role our Gallery plays as a forum for discussion, debate and education.”

Mr Saines said the exhibition was divided in to three broad thematic strands that explore how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists depict the stories of their communities and highlight contemporary Indigenous experiences in Australia.

Press release from the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) website

Michael Cook (Australian, Queensland b. 1968)
Bidjara people
Civilised #13
2012
Inkjet print on paper
Purchased 2012
Queensland Art Gallery
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
© The artist

Michael Cook’s works depict an ethereal dreamworld, a timeless place that traverses both the colonial and contemporary worlds and is sustained on ‘what ifs’ and hypotheticals. It is a place of Cook’s own modern Dreaming. His central question is quite simple: what if the British, instead of dismissing Aboriginal society, had taken a more open approach to their culture and knowledge systems? This all-Aboriginal world is a sort of utopia where questions can be posed and answered without the complication of race – there is no black and white, no right or wrong. The figures within them are both conquerors and conquered. Through the use of images of Aboriginal people, often in roles opposite to the stereotypical, Cook ensures that an Aboriginal voice is ever-present.

Fiona Foley (Australian, Queensland/New South Wales b. 1964)
Badtjala people, Wondunna clan, Fraser Island
The Oyster Fishermen #1
2011
Inkjet print on Hahnemühle paper
Purchased 2012
Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Bindi Cole (Australian, Victoria b. 1975)
Wathaurung people
Crystal
2009
Pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper
Purchased 2011 with funds from the Bequest of Grace Davies and Nell Davies through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
© Bindi Cole 2009. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney, 2013

Bindi Cole (Australian, Victoria b. 1975)
Wathaurung people
Frederina
2009
Pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper
Purchased 2011 with funds from the Bequest of Grace Davies and Nell Davies through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
© Bindi Cole 2009. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney, 2013

Vernon Ah Kee (Australian, Queensland b. 1967)
Kuku Yalanji/Waanyi/Yidinyji/GuuguYimithirr people
Tall Man (still)
2010
Four-channel digital video installation from DVD
Purchased 2012
Queensland Art Gallery
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Gordon Hookey (Australian, Queensland/New South Wales b. 1961)
Waanyi people
Blood on the wattle, blood on the palm
2009
Oil on linen
The James C Sourris, AM, Collection
Gift of James C Sourris, AM, through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2012
Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Michael Riley (Australian, New South Wales 1960-2004)
Kamilaroi/Wiradjuri people
Sacrifice (portfolio) (detail)
1993
Colour cibachrome photograph
Purchased 2002
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Christian Thompson (Australian, Queensland/New South Wales/Victoria b. 1978)
Bidjarra/Kunja people
Black Gum 2 (from Australian Graffiti series)
2008
Type C photograph
Purchased 2008
The Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Warwick Thornton (Australian, Northern Territory b. 1970)
Kaytej people
Stranded (still)
2011
3D digital video: 11.06 minutes, colour, sound
Commissioned by the 2011 Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund
Purchased 2011
Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
© Warwick Thornton. Image courtesy the artist and Stills Gallery

Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA)

The Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) and Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) are located 150 metres from each other, on the south bank of the Brisbane River. Entrance to both buildings is possible from Stanley Place, and the river front entrance to the Queensland Art Gallery is on Melbourne Street. The Galleries are within easy walking distance to the city centre and South Bank Parklands.

Opening hours:
Daily 10.00am – 5.00pm

Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Review: ‘Emily Kame Kngwarreye: The Person and her Paintings’ at DACOU Aboriginal Art, Port Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 29th October – 6th December 2009

Emily Kame Kngwarreye (Australian, 1910-1996)
My Country
1996
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

“One can theorise about beauty all day, but words are weak and at day’s end one will go out into the blue and golden and multifarious world, and one will know with the responsive heart, before there is time for words, what is and isn’t beautiful.”

.
Leo Rubinfien1

There are certain existential experiences in art one will always remember:

.
The maelstrom of convulsive colours in the paintings of J. M. W. Turner at the Tate in London

Being alone in a gallery at the Louvre with six self-portraits by Rembrandt and embracing their inner humanity

Sitting in the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris and being surrounded by the elemental forces of Monet’s panels of Nymphéas

Listening to “Sorrowful Songs” from the Symphony No. 3 by Gorecki

.
to name but a few.

Added to this list would be my experience of this exhibition of paintings by Emily Kame Kngwarreye.

It was a privilege to spend time alone with the work, just wandering around the gallery that is situated in an industrial estate in Port Melbourne. It is difficult for me to describe the experience such was the connection I had with the work, with the earth. I am emotional even writing about it. Standing in front of these paintings all pretensions of existence, all trappings of society, dissolve in colour, in presence.

I am a naturalised Australian having been born in England; I have never been to the far desert. This does not matter. What I felt, what I experienced was a connection to the land, to the stories that Emily has told in these paintings. We all come from the earth and return to it.

The paintings were painted horizontally (like the painter Jackson Pollock who intuitively accessed the spiritual realm) and evidence a horizontal consciousness not a hierarchical one. Knowledge is not privileged over wisdom. There is a balance between knowledge and wisdom – the knowledge gained through a life well lived and the wisdom of ancient stories that represent the intimacy of living on this world. The patterns and diversities of life compliment each other, are in balance.

Wisdom comes from the Indo-European root verb weid, “to see,” the same root from which words like vision come.2 In this sense these are “Vedic” paintings in that they are ancient, sacred teachings, Veda meaning literally “I have seen.”

On this day I saw. I felt.

Rarely do I have such an emotional reaction to art. When it does happen it washes over me, it cleanses my soul and releases pent up emotions – about life, about mortality, about being.

As Cafe del Mar in one of their songs, “The Messenger” sing:

“We,
We got the feeling of Mystery,
We got the touch of humanity,
I know, we can’t live forever.”

.
Go and be touched.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

.
Thank you to Leanne Collier and DACOU Aboriginal Art for allowing me to reproduce the three large photographs of two Wildflower paintings and one My Country painting.

1/ Rubinfien, Leo. “Perfect Uncertainty: Robert Adams and the American West, (2002)” on Americansuburb X: Theory. [Online] Cited 22/11/2009 no longer available online

2/ Doczi, Gyorgy. The Power of Limits: Proportional Harmonies in Nature, Art and Architecture. Colorado: Shambala Publications, 1981, p. 127

Emily Kame Kngwarreye (Australian, 1910-1996)
My Country
1996
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Emily Kame Kngwarreye is Australia’s most important and famous female artist. Hailed as a modernist ‘genius’, she has been compared to Rothko and de Kooning. An Anmatyerre elder from Utopia in the remote central desert region of the Northern Territory, Emily first took up painting on canvas in her late 70’s. She quickly became one of the leaders in the contemporary Aboriginal art movement, transforming her style several times during her short career of eight years. Today she is known as one of the greatest abstract painters of the 20th century.

This important exhibition of over 80 pieces covering all significant series and periods of Emily Kngwarreye’s artistic career is the first commercial retrospective exhibition to be held since she passed away in 1996. It gives the public an outstanding chance to view and purchase works in each of her styles. DACOU has retained numerous magnificent pieces over the years that will be included in this exhibition, such as rarely seen works from Emily’s Ochre Series, created with ochre and charcoal she collected from her country. On show will be the sister painting to the famous Earth’s Creation (also titled Earth’s Creation, 1994, 4 panels, 211 x 596cm) and just as splendid in colour and style.

Text from the DACOU Aboriginal Art website [Online] Cited 27/11/2009 no longer available online

Emily Kame Kngwarreye (Australian, 1910-1996)
Wildflower
1992
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Emily Kame Kngwarreye (Australian, 1910-1996)
Wildflower (detail)
1992
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Inspired by her cultural life as an Anmatyerre elder Emily produced over 3000 paintings over the course of her short eight-year painting career. Her lifelong custodianship of the women’s Dreaming sites of her clan country and in particular her yam Dreaming is the driving force behind her work (Kame meaning yam seed). Her work displays an instinct created by decades of making art for private purposes, drawing in soft earth and ritual body painting. Strong lineal structures whereupon individual dots overlap lines and appearing within others trace the appearance of seeds, plants and tracks on her country.

Text from the University of Canberra website [Online] Cited 11/05/2019