Backyard Wild

Opening Friday 18 November 2011
Until 10 December

Prints, photographs and sculpture by: Talitha Kennedy, Siying Zhou, Anna Reynolds, Winsome Jobling, Merran Sierakowski, Basil Hall.

Darwin suburbs are a unique environment where the indoor and out-door blend together. Houses, backyards and parks host a continuing cycle of growth, decay and fusion, a place where wildlife thrives as a continuum of nature. Plant roots, creepers, seedpods, birds, reptiles, insects, organisms and people collaborate and compete for backyard equilibrium.

Download a PDF (512Kb) of the exhibition showing a selection of artwork from the exhibition >>

Recent Prints from Warnum Arts

Warmun artists are renowned for images in natural ochres, which are integral to the contemporary expression of land, culture and identity of the Gija people. These etchings draw upon traditional Ngarrangkarni (Dreaming) stories and contemporary life and include new work by Charlene Carrington, Churchill Cann, Nancy Nodea and Shirley Purdie. Editioned at Basil Hall Editions in Darwin.

View the online gallery >>

Recent Prints by Dion Beasley

Dion Beasley’s prints depict the social structures and relationships between people and animals, the interaction they maintain with each other and the world around them. Dion’s humorous nature is captured in his artwork by a clever and intuitive use of space as well as his ability to give a sense of character and movement to the animals, people and places he draws.

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Linocut prints by Joel Sam, Billy Missi and Brian Robinson

Djumbunji Press, Printmaking Centre in Cairns nurtures the extraordinary talents of printmakers in the region and has published many beautiful and high-quality fine art prints by emerging and established artists from across Far North Queensland. Artists including Billy Missi, Brian Robinson and Joel Sam.

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Barrupu and Nyapanyapa Yunupingu

Barrupu and Nyapanyapa Yunupingu are senior artists and sisters who work closely together to produce bark paintings, screenprints, linocut and etchings. They live together at Birritjimi (Wallaby Beach) near Yirrkala. Their father, Mungurrawuy Yunupingu was a senior artist and a cultural leader.

Barrupu and Nyapanyapa started at the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka art centre Yirrkala as print artists in 1996. They share a lifelong connection as artists with an energetic and daring aesthetic and experimental approach to composition, form and imagery.

Through their paintings, the sisters enter an internal world, tapping into intimate structures of their life and shared culture. This involves oscillating between levels of understanding and away from immediate surroundings. In this regard Barrupu and Nyapanyapa transform their cultural heritage, knowledge and experience into a contemporary aesthetic principle.

Download the catalogue (PDF file) >>

View artwork on the online gallery by Nyapanyapa Yunupingu >>

View artwork on the online gallery by Barrupu Yunupingu >>

New Prints from Papunya Tjupi Arts: July 2011

Papunya Tjupi Arts is an Aboriginal owned, community-based enterprise, located at Papunya 237 kms northwest from Alice Springs. Papunya is said to be the birthplace of the Western Desert Art movement in the 1970’s though Papunya Tjupi Arts only recently commenced its operation in November of 2007. Since then the centre has gone from strength to strength allowing the artists to continue expressing their cultural law through arts practice.

These new prints depicting designs associated with traditional lands and bush foods are the result of artist workshops in Papunya (2010) with Basil Hall Editions, Darwin and Cicada Press located in the College of Fine Arts, Sydney.

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Bardayal Bim

A folio of ten limited edition prints by renowned artist Bardayal Nadjamerrek AO (Deceased)

From the heart of Ankung Kunred (sugarbag), country of the Arnhem Land plateau, Bardayal brought the sacred stories of ancestral beings and fauna and flora to life. Bardayal Bim is the ‘big story’, the embodiment of his dreaming place. ‘My ancestors gave me this place and I myself have a longing for this country.’ Bardayal Nadjamerrek AO.

A boxed folio of ten limited edition etchings, edition size 30. Collaborative printmaker Andrew Sinclair.

View online gallery >>

Download the PDF catalogue (3.5MB) >>

Many Stories To Tell

Many Stories to Tell is a selection of new prints from Yarrenyty-Arltere in Alice Springs. The exhibition features powerful images of the artists’ Arrernte homelands west of Alice Springs and are the result of a two-week workshop with Tasmanian print maker Maddie Goodwolf.

Yarrenyty-Arltere Learning Centre is a family resource and learning centre, which aims to improve the social, health, environmental and economic well being of the community in a way that strengthens and respects culture.

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Young Ones

Young Ones is a series of self-portraits by young artists from Yirrkala Community in Eastern Arnhem Land. The portraits combine photographic images and hand printing to reveal inner feelings, interests and associations.

The images are the result of a series of art workshops held at Buku Larrnggay Mulka Art Centre in 2010. The mixed media workshops were offered to young people who were not engaged with mainstream schooling and were a huge success in terms of promoting self-esteem and community engagement.

View the works:

Read article by Nicholas Rothwell:

I AM TIWI

A boxed folio of ten prints by Jean Baptiste Apuatimi

Launching 15 April in Darwin, Canberra and Melbourne An important folio of ten limited edition prints by renowned Tiwi artist Jean Baptiste Apuatimi. This body of work embodies the iconic imagery produced by this important Australian artist for whom painting is an act of engagement in a culture and tradition linking the past with the present and nurturing the future.

Etchings produced at Australian Print Workshop and lithographs produced at Tiwi Design, Bathurst Island in collaboration with APW Printers Martin King and Simon White. All works editioned at Australian Print Workshop, Melbourne.

Download a PDF Catalogue of the exhibition (2MB) >

Jean Baptiste Apuatimi at Tiwi Design on Bathhurst Island working on her prints. Martin King and Jean Baptiste Apuatimi at Australian Print Workshop in Melbourne.

View the online gallery >

Fiona Hall – Burning Bright

Burning Bright Folio

Burning Bright is a folio of six etchings produced by Fiona Hall in collaboration with print maker Basil Hall in Darwin and Arnhem Land as part of the Djalkiri project.

Djalkiri: we are standing on their names – Blue Mud Bay is an exhibition of works by Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists created during a cross-cultural collaborative printmaking workshop at Yilpara, Blue Mud Bay, 2009/10. Djalkiri literally means ‘footprint’, but when applied to Yolgnu law it takes on a more profound meaning, forming the ‘spiritual foundation of the world’.

Following is a statement by Fiona Hall Our journey began with a dance: in this ceremonial way the Blue Mud Bay community welcomed us to their country. Over the following days as they showed us around they unfolded for us the living map of their land and sea, which charts Yolgnu culture and embodies Yolgnu ancestry. We learned that their homeland is a story place; it is the larder and the medicine chest, the almanac and vast encyclopedia. We saw that their sea and land and sky are home to many creatures, and learned they harbour sacred places where past and present are manifest, perpetually.

The time when we visited was the lead-up to the Wet. The last of the burning was in progress, washing the land with fire in readiness for the rain. Some of the plants were already pushing out fresh new growth and bursting into flower, eager to get a head start. I felt that I could hear them singing out to the rains to hurry up and come.

Not long before traveling to Blue Mud Bay, I listened to Djambawa Marawili sing a song of his country to his bark paintings at an exhibition in Moscow. I didn’t know the words of his song, but I sensed that through his singing his saltwater world flowed into the space around them, easing them into a strange land and culture, for his paintings and their stories were very far from home.

For each of us, home is a place that is not only fixed on a map but floats along the tributaries of our consciousness. The place I come from is, I think, located somewhere on the ebb tide of the world at large, a place in a culture in a continual state of flux, drifting without an anchor. It is a place which is sharing less and less of its space with its kindred plants and animals, and which is inundated time and again by the tidal waves of its own gross superfluities. Too often the world I belong to absolves itself of guilt and responsibility for its actions by washing away the traces of its murky history. I have a sinking feeling that I’m from a society that is now foundering out of its depth, which laid down its foundation on quicksand.

I learned at Blue Mud Bay that Yolgnu culture is a fluid one, with a deep knowledge of and respect for the source from which it flows. A tide of goodwill from the community there invited us to walk and sit together to create Djalkiri. In the slipstream of this collaboration our different worlds are flowing together, making ripples on the surface where our cultures meet. I think I see a shimmer on the horizon. Fiona Hall 2010.

Burning Bright Edition: 41 Image size 50 x 66 cm

View the Burning Bright Folio >>

Desert Mob 20th Anniversary Print Folio

A boxed folio of forty original woodcuts by Indigenous artists from DesArt Art Centres (Central Australia), priced at $6,600. Editioned at Basil Hall Editions to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Desert Mob in 2010.

Each community selected an artist to represent their Art Centre. The prints are by well-known and emerging artists including Judy Napangardi Watson, Patrick Tjungarrayi, Peggy Jones, Roy Underwood and David Miller.

View complete list of artists >>

The forty blocks are also available as five large panels, seen here exhibited at the Araluen Arts Centre as part of Desert Mob 2010. Price $6,600. Also available individually. Please contact Nomart Art.

Tjukurrpa palurukutu, kutjupawana palyantjanya

Same Stories, A New Way

First limited edition etchings by artists from Kintore and Kiwirrkura, produced in 2010 by Papunya Tula Artists in collaboration with Dian Darmansjah, Firebox Print Studio, Queensland.

These prints depict imagery associated with traditional body and sand painting designs from the Central and Western Desert of Australia.

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Winsome Jobling, Mesozoic – the age of the cycads

The Mesozoic Era is a period of geological time from 250 million to 65 million years ago. It is a time when cycads developed and proliferated throughout the world and were grazed by herbivorous dinosaurs. Cycads are the world’s oldest living seed plants and have survived three mass extinction events in the earth’s history and today some species are again facing a growing threat of extinction.

In this exhibition Winsome Jobling depicts cycads in various stages of growth and in different seasons; other images evoke primordial origins of the plants through ghostly layers, or by emanating a strange glow. Jobling has incorporated her practice as a paper maker and print maker developing one-off prints on papers made from layers of gamba grass, cotton and banana, pigmented with bush charcoal and phosphorescent materials, alluding to the effects of fire.

View Winsome Jobling’s prints on the online gallery >>

Tiwi Islands – Ochre on paper

Paintings by Tiwi artists from three art centres on Bathurst and Melville Island featuring:

Conrad Tipungwuti, Linus Warlapinni and Timothy Cook fromJilamara Arts & Crafts

Nina Puruntatameri, Pauletta Kerinauia and Lydia Burak fromMunupi Arts & Crafts

Alfonso Puautjimi, Estelle Mukanome and Lorna Kantilla fromNgaruwanajirri.

View Tiwi Works on Paper>>

Ta Teut Amarasi Awakening

Contemporary textiles and prints based on the traditions of Amarasi, West Timor

Ta Teut Amarasi Awakening is a visual arts exhibition of traditional Indonesian hand woven textiles and contemporary prints on hand-made paper. The exhibition is the outcome of an artistic collaboration between Darwin artists and Sanggar Uim Nima, an Indonesian weaving collective.

In 2007, Darwin artists, Winsome Jobling and Leon Stainer, travelled to Baun, Amarasi, in West Timor to introduce fine art print and paper-making techniques to Sanggar Uim Nima. Local plant crops including grasses and banana trees were utilised for papermaking, while the community learnt printmaking techniques including linocut and copper engraving.

From the workshops a series of limited edition prints has been produced. These prints, which employ motifs and imagery used in Sanggar Uim Nima’s textile work, will be exhibited as part of Ta Teut Amarasi – Awakening along with a range of the community’s traditional textiles.

View the Ta Teut Amarasi collection in the Online Gallery >>

View the Ta Teut Amarasi Article >>