Now, until Saturday, 29 April 2006

Voices Old and New: Works by Leading and Emerging Aboriginal Artists

“Amazing Aboriginal” is what PaperCity arts writer Catherine Anspon has called this show of colorful new works from well-known and highly-collectible indigenous artists from Australia. This collection puts to rest any perceptions that Aboriginal works of art are all in traditional ochre colors of reds and golds.

Among the paintings featured are the vivid minimalist works of Mitjili Naparrula, whose simple forms in purples on gold, crimson and green, bright blue and tan, all evoke the desert plants she knows intimately. In contrast, Barney Campbell Tjakemare creates maze-like paintings from his boyhood memories of the central desert, one in bright red against a black surface, another in palest lavender on a buttercream background. Well-known Utopia painter Lorna Fencer’s Bush Potato Dreaming, is in tropical tangerines and lime greens, while top-ranked Yuendumu artist, Judy Watson Napangardi, has created her signature undulating forms in pastels highlighted with red and white.

Terry Smith : “Primacy, Convergence, Currency,” in ArtPapers, July/August 2005
“Aboriginal art is contemporary . . . because these artists are creating Australia’s richest and most diverse art today . . . If the revival of pure painting is trumpeted in art journals and in campus exhibitions every six months . . . these are usually feeble affairs compared to the achievement of the best Aboriginal artists . . . Only a few artists working largely against the grain of contemporary trends, such as Gerhard Richter and Sean Scully, could be said to produce abstract painting that matches the achievement of these Aboriginal artists.”