Jirrawun: A Legacy in Print

Nomad Art features the recent arrival of etchings by some of the key artists from the renowned Jirrawun Arts. Based in Wyndham, Western Australia from 1998 to 2010 Jirrawun Arts was a galvanising period in the history of East Kimberley art, helping to establish the careers of many of Australia’s leading contemporary Aboriginal artists.

Created in a series of workshops between 2004-05, the works here by Rammey Ramsey, Phyllis Thomas, Freddie Timms and Rusty Peters depict ancestral stories and significant sites with their signature minimalist and striking compositions.

Now represented by Warmun Art Centre, works by these senior artists are held in most of Australia’s major public and private galleries. They are also represented in significant collections overseas. These early etchings were an important step in the development of the unique East Kimberley style, and represent a series of important historical moments in the development of their individual works.

Recent prints from Buku Larrnggay Mulka

Recent prints from Yirrkala Print Workshop feature etchings, lithographs, linocuts and screenprints by leading Yolngu artists which are a reflection of their culture, ingenuity, skill and artistic vision.

Buku Larrnggay Mulka has a long and proud history as one of Australia’s premier Indigenous art centres and printmaking studios. The artists have established a national reputation for their work, having won many of Australia’s major Indigenous art prizes.

Buku Larrnggay Mulka is one of the few art centres in Australia to establish and maintain a dedicated print workshop, which is staffed by Indigenous printmakers. In the last fifteen years the Centre has produced a wide range of linocuts, screen prints, etchings, lithographs, and collographs. While the artists are respectful of the discipline of miny’tji (sacred design) the nature of the printmaking process has allowed them to experiment more freely with colour, imagery, concepts and design without compromising their spiritual identity. Many of the artists who have worked in the print workshop are women who have been leaders in innovation and change.

Terraforming

Down at Vesteys Beach, embedded in the sand and silt, is a collection of sedimentary rocks known as conglomerates. These conglomerates are the result of massive earth forming events across millenia. Consequently they have been deformed, metamorphosed and intruded by post-tectonic granitic and mafic rocks. Fragments of shells bear witness to habitation from a Precambrian marine transgression.

Vesteys Beach conglomerates are time capsules that interact with the dynamics of present day conditions. These rocks gently release their particles undergoing transformation as waves and erosion free captured granite or shell to mingle with other shoreline debris.

Our shorelines today are littered with flotsam and jetsam: plastic bottles, aluminium cans, polystyrene, fishing wire, drinking straws, spent party poppers, weather balloons and the like.. The tide reveals their presence temporarily before they are  impassively reclaimed. Debris is crushed and deformed, crumpled and pushed forward to settle on our ocean floors, be eaten by marine life or absorbed into the growth cycle of spongers, corals and molluscs. As sedimentary materials they express the intersection of human history and geological time. Marine transgressions made by us, washed ashore before forming part of our future cultural geology.

Sarah Pirrie 2014

Galico (Fabric)

Galico is the word for fabric in the Gupapuyngu language, one of the many languages and dialects used throughout Arnhem Land. Galico is derived from the word ‘calico’, which was bought to Arnhem Land by the Macassans from Indonesia – who visited and traded with the Yolngu for hundreds of years before white contact.

This exhibition at Nomad Art will showcase reprinted designs from the long history of textile printing at Bula’bula Arts, and will also launch a range of new and innovative designs from the senior Artists of Ramingining. Luscious fabrics and opulent colourways will bring these sacred designs to life.

Contact the gallery for more information on fabrics.

Botany of the Heart

Inspired by the mangroves and tropical ecologies of Darwin, Talitha Kennedy has taken the aesthetic of fecundity to heart. Talitha’s drawings are elaborate ink on paper doodles, working between conscious thought and raw instinct to evoke intimate landscapes suggestive of plant, body and earth as transforming mass.

Her artistic practice examines the human relationship with wild nature. Living in the tropics has resulted in direct and tangible influence on her art. Drawings and sculptures interpret the aesthetics of fecundity and the tension between human culture and natural forces.

 Artist’s Statement >

Bush Life

Bush Life is an exciting new exhibition by the Tjanpi Desert Weavers that explores elements of life in the remote communities of the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (NPY) Lands of Central Australia.

These quirky grass sculptural works are a physical representation of the everyday items that hold significance to the artists including motorcars, helicopters, guitars, camp dogs and native animals of the Lands.

Bush Life features both three dimensional and flat sculptures that resonate with the spirit of the Country and the artists who wove them. Physical elements of the Country are incorporated into the weaving through the use of wild-harvested grasses while contemporary life is acknowledged in the use of found objects sourced from community settlements. Works are made from a combination of  Tjanpi (wild-harvested grasses), date palm, raffia, acrylic yarn, plastic-coated wire;  and emu feathers.

Through this exhibition Tjanpi artists celebrate life in remote communities, creativity and Country.

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Yuta (New): a continuing tradition of youth art from Yirrkala

In 2014 the print studio at Buku-Larrnggay Mulka began with an influx of new emerging artists and young trainee printmakers. The print space has always maintained a policy to employ and train local Yolngu in the art of printmaking to ensure that Yolngu printmakers edition the prints created by Yolngu artists.

This year Munuy’ngu Marika, Bawu Gurruwiwi, Godut Ganambarr, Dhalmula Burarrwanga and Burrthi Marika, all aged between 18 – 20 years old, began full time work at the print studio alongside existing printers Paula Gumana and Annie Studd.  All of these young artists created and editioned their own linocuts which are part of the exciting Yuta (New) exhibition at Nomad Art.

The print studio has always been a place of activity but for 2014 these young Indigenous people have created a working environment where their music, their aesthetic and their world enlivens and spreads joy and hope through the daily operations of the gallery.

The prints at Yuta ‘New’ have all been editioned by the hands of these and other young printmaker artists over the last three years at Buku-Larrnggay Mulka and reflect the environment from which they came, a place of newness, laughter, learning and the future grown from the foundations of culture and tradition.

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Prints and fabrics from Far North Queensland

Tropical Northern Queensland is an environment rich in cultural and natural diversity where tropical rain forests, wetlands and estuarine mangroves meet the Torres Strait.

Likewise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art is rich and symbolic. Diversity and artistic innovation abounds through contemporary artworks, including etchings, linocuts, ceramics, textiles and ghost net weavings.

Artists from Erub Erwer Meta (Darnley Island) produce contemporary ghost net weavings, sculptures and vibrant screenprinted fabrics. The work celebrates island life and culture by translating traditional stories to a modern medium.

Surrounded by wetlands on the east coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria, artists from Pormpuraaw are accomplished printmakers who produce traditional images as contemporary etchings and linocut prints.  Their sculptural ghost net works have quirky characteristics, often with aquatic themes.

Etchings and drypoint prints by artists from Yarrabah Arts and Culture were completed during a visit in 2013 from Paul Machnick, from Studio PM in Montreal who has collaborated at length with Inuit artists.  In this series artists explore the local traditions of pandanus and cabbage palm weaving through the medium of print.  Similar themes are explored in a series of coil pots, which are inspired by the natural environment and country.

Yaninpala Yirwarrawanna Kutjupa Ngurrarrakutu – Walking the Path

Warlayirti Artists are well known for their beautiful, high quality artworks including limited edition prints. Since 2002, there has been a long-standing collaboration between the Balgo artists and the printers from Northern Editions in Darwin. This partnership has resulted in numerous editions of etchings and screenprints and in more recent times has expanded to include Japanese woodblock printing for the men.

The new etchings feature work by senior women artists Eubena Nampitjin, Elizabeth Nyumi, Ningie Nanala and Bai Bai Napangarti and are the first prints created by these artists since 2006. As senior custodians from Balgo, Lake Mackay, Canning Stock Route, Billiluna, Tanami and Great Sandy Deserts, the artists hold a unique position in Indigenous and artistic history.

The Japanese woodblock prints involve the male artists carving designs onto woodblocks which are printed onto Japanese rice paper. The artists include skilled wood carvers Helicopter Tjungurrayi, Bonnie James, Larry Gondora, Quinton Milner and David Mudgedell. The woodcuts are in response to an existing but not regularly practised carving tradition upon sandstone and soapstone, as well as wood for boomerangs, shields and spears. These prints retell traditional tjukurrpas (Dreamings) and knowledge in an alternative medium, so important stories are retained for perpetuity.

The title of the exhibition Yaninpala Yirwarrawanna Kutjupa Ngurrarrakutu – Walking the Path, is based around the idea of a pathway from old and moving to the new. The works encapsulate old traditions and stories, which are transformed into a different model of representation.

Karritpul

Kieren Karritpul is a highly talented emerging artist from Merrepen Arts at Nauiyu Community on the Daly River. Karritpul paints subjects associated with the traditional culture and knowledge of his family heritage. This exhibition includes recent paintings, prints and fabric designed by this exciting new artist in his first solo exhibition.

I have grown up watching my grandmother, mother and aunties all collect yerrgi (pandanus) for weaving of baskets and mats. We search for many different plants, roots and berries which we use to dye the yerrgi to create beautiful colours. 

The yerrgi is bunched as it is in my painting after the dyeing process and ready to use by the women for weaving. The inspiration for my painting has come from the many bundles of yerrgi I watched being made by my mother and grandmother as a young child. This was always a time when my elders would pass on old stories and teach me important knowledge about my Aboriginal culture.

My love of painting and textile design comes from being able to tell really old stories passed down to me from my elders and telling these stories in a whole new way by placing these on textiles and paintings.

Kieren Karritpul

View the Textile Store >

Lorna Naparulla Fencer (dec)

Yulyurlu Lorna Fencer Napurrurla was a Warlpiri artist from Lajamanu in the Tanami Desert of the Northern Territory.  Born in the 1920’s, she began painting in 1986 and quickly developed a signature style of vivid colour and liberal use of paint. She soon became one of the most sought after artists in the region, with her paintings  included in exhibitions and her work acquired by prominent international and Australian collections.

Napurrurla first began painting in the classic style of Warlpiri art with symbols often distributed amongst fields of dots. Over time Napurrurla moved away from these classic abstract elements to more descriptive interpretations of her Dreaming by painting foliage, flowers, tubers and root structures.  This form of ‘stylised naturalism’ executed with energetic, painterly layers also gave rise to her ability as a gifted colourist to combine vibrant colour combinations and create successful compositions.

Napurrurla was custodian for the sacred country of Yumurrpa, and for the Yarla-Pama (Caterpillar), Ngarlajiyi (Pencil Yam) and Yarla (Bush Potato) Dreamings of this site. She passed away in 2006, aged in her eighties.

Naparrulla was celebrated with a major retrospective exhibition which commenced as part of the Darwin Festival in 2011 and toured nationally for several years. It received great critical acclaim highlighting the importance of the artist and her contribution to the central desert art movement.

Contact the gallery for more information and prices.

View the Education Kit

Printmaking at Maningrida

Maningrida Arts and Culture is a community of artists from approximately 34 outstations in East Arnhem Land. The Art Centre was established in the early 1970’s and is continually on the forefront of innovation and artistic endeavor reflecting the diversity of languages and cultures of the region.

Maningrida artists first made prints in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, when the late Johnny Bulunbulun, David Milaybuma and other artists visited Port Jackson Press and the Canberra School of Art.

Printmaking was fully incorporated at the Art Centre in 1997 with a series of etching, lithography and screenprinting workshops and projects through Charles Darwin University’s Northern Editions, initiated by printmaker Basil Hall. The new wave of printmakers included women and the exploration of colour and a contemporary expression of their culture. In the mid 2000’s French printmaker Jean Kohen worked with a range of artists to produce this series of etchings.

These workshops and collaborations have enabled both male and female artists to discover and experiment with the print medium.  The process has stimulated new interpretations of subject matter found in rock art throughout the Arnhem Land escarpment such as weaving, plant and animal motifs. It has also enabled artists such as Kate Miwulku a physical and emotional expression of her culture.

What Lies Beneath

In this exhibition Merran Sierakowski presents hostile fishes that surround the Australian coastline. The fishes are a metaphor for the unwelcoming treatment of refugees to our shores; they represent old prejudices and fears, much as images of monsters were depicted on medieval maps of imagined lands.

Merran Sierakowski is a prolific artist who consistently addresses social, political and environmental issues. Her creative, ironic and whimsical art works reflect on human rights, cultural identity and sense of place.

Merran’s art practice encompasses limited edition prints, digital imagery, sculpture and installations. She uses a variety of techniques incorporating fabric, paper, metal, stone, wire, wood and found objects.

As an artist I keep coming back to ideas about fear and rejection, modern interpretations and historical links are a constant theme of my practice. The ideas that are exemplified in these works can also be applied to many other less enlightened attitudes that persist in our community. The sculptures serve as a catalyst for the viewer to recognise their own fears and monsters. Merran Sierakowski 2014

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Earth: works in paper

In this exhibition, Winsome Jobling reflects upon the exploitation of Earth and questions the increasing imbalance of the human – nature relationship. Through rich organic images Jobling explores the nature of landscapes that have been disemboweled by human activity, leaving scars and exit wounds that may never be healed. The works consist of handmade paper made from plant materials and earth pigments.

What is our relationship to the earth?

We disembowel the earth of resources; minerals, oil and gas leaving scars and exit wounds that may never be healed. Constantly taking and using what the earth has to offer. Geologists look for tell-tale signatures of minerals in rock types, strata, electromagnetics, geochemical patterns, and recently botanic research. There is gold in the leaves of the Eucalyptus trees around Kalgoorlie. Our need is insatiable. Is Mine the appropriate word? Would Ours be more mindful and humble?

The earth is a system of moving gas, liquid and solids, all part of much bigger interconnected and interdependent components and we are part of this dynamic. Our domination and exploitation of nature may alienate us from the earth we stand on. Is there an increasing imbalance of the human – nature relationship? Certainly our pristine ‘white’ goods, fuelled by industrialism, technology and consumerism, are the antithesis of the dirt and ore they come from, helping us forget their earthly origins. Winsome Jobling 2014

View the Online Gallery >

Download the Earth Catalogue PDF (1.9 mb) >

Further Reading

Recognising Indigenous Knowledge PDF (.5 mb) >

(Winsome Jobling – Hand Papermaking, Vol 28, no 2, 2013)

Charles Darwin University – Looking at Art >