Exhibitions

Inner Worlds II

Marlene Rabuntja, Marjorie Keighran,
Stewart Hoosan, Dion Beasley and Ray James Tjangala

This month we continue to explore the imaginative world of artists who are celebrated for their distinctive personal styles. These works take us on a visual journey through memories and observations of people who live across Australia. They draw us into a world of experiences and knowledge through imagery of animals, plants and places that embody remote life. We hope you enjoy Inner Worlds ll.

Marlene Rubuntja

Marlene draws inspiration from what she sees around her at Yarrenyty Arltere Town Camp in Alice Springs. She is interested in telling proudly the stories of her ancestors as well as her husband’s country atKalkarindji. These are the delicate twigs that fall from the desert trees.

Marjorie Keighran

Marjorie is a senior Garrwa woman, whose Dreaming is Kananganja (Emu). Marjorie was born at Westmoreland Station on the NT and Queensland border. She grew up at Wollogorang station and Red Bank Mine, south-east of Borroloola, where she spent her days hunting and gathering bush tucker. Many of Marjorie’s paintings contain images of nanny goats as she spent many of her teenage days on the station at Robinson River herding and looking after them: “We’d look after them and take them down to the water and take them back up again”.

Stewart Hoosan

Stewart Hoosan depicts life and the history of the people around Borroloola, a remote community on the McArthur River in the Northern Territory, set in an arresting landscape of rocky hills, cattle-grazed scrub, billabongs, and wide horizons. Hoosan’s images are layered with a sense of past histories and continuing connections set amongst the distinctive beauty of the surrounding landscape, flora and fauna.

Dion Beasley

Being profoundly deaf Dion has experienced many challenges throughout his life but has developed a great passion for drawing, which has served as a means of communication with others. Dion’s delightful depiction of dogs form the basis of the majority of his drawings. Dion’s personal expression focuses on the camp dogs that are central to the life of Aboriginal communities, with its own dramas, tensions and energies.

Ray James Tjangala

Tjangala’s print is part of a suite of etchings by Papunya Tula artists which demonstrates the strength of each artist as they successfully translate their Tjukurrpa to the medium of etching. Tjangala’s image relates to the soakage water site Yunala, west of Kiwirrkura community in Western Australia. In ancestral times a large group of Tingari Men camped at this site before continuing their travels further east to Pinari, north-west of Kintore community. While at Yunala they gathered the edible roots of the bush banana or silky pear vine, (Marsdenia australis), also known as yunala, which is plentiful in the region. The designs in the etching represent body paint worn during ceremonies relating to Yunala.

View works online:

Marlene Rabuntja

Marjorie Keighran

Stewart Hoosan

Dion Beasley

Ray James Tjangala

Inner Worlds

Dulcie Sharpe, Monique Auricchio, 

Malaluba Gumana (dec), John Wolseley

This month we are looking into the imaginative world of the artist. Inner Worlds presents artists who are celebrated for their distinctive personal styles. These works take us on a journey through memories and observations to tell us stories of animals, places and emblematic characters. They draw us into a world observed – with the thoughts, humour, fear and joy that embody life. We hope you enjoy Inner Worlds.

Dulcie Sharpe was born at Jay Creek in the Northern Territory. The inspiration for her art comes from animals and bush tucker and features powerful images of the artists’ Arrernte homelands west of Alice Springs.

Monique Auricchio is a New South Wales based printmaker who explores the menacing relationships between predator and prey in the animal kingdom. Her work contains whimsical and theatrical elements of animals infused with human sensibility and evokes the fragile and peculiar pecking order of the human and animal condition.

Malaluba Gumana (dec) was an NT artist who lived at Gangan, NE Arnhem Land. Malaluba mainly painted her mother’s Gålpu clan designs of dhatam (waterlilly), djari (ripples and rainbows), djayku (filesnake) and wititj (olive python). Her imagery refers to one of the oldest continuous human religious iconographical practices – the story of the Rainbow Serpent. Djaykuŋ (filesnake) lives amongst the dhatam, causing Djari, on the surface of the water. It also refers to the power of the storm created by Wititj, the diagonal lines representing trees that have been knocked down as Wititj moves from place to place.

English born artist John Wolseley has travelled and painted Australia from the central deserts to the forests of Tasmania and the tidal reaches of east Arnhem Land and beyond. His work over the last twenty years has been a search to discover how we dwell and move within landscape – a kind of meditation on how land is a dynamic system of which we are all a part. Through his series of works entitled One Hundred and One Insect Life Stories, Wolseley invites us to enter the umwelt or ‘life world’ of non-human creatures.

View works online:

Dulcie Sharpe

Monique Auricchio

Malaluba Gumana

John Wolseley

Tiwi Focus

Jean Baptiste Apuatimi (dec), Maria Josette Orsto, Raelene Kerinauia and Janice Murray are senior Tiwi artists of national repute. Each has forged a distinct style within the artistic traditions of their culture. This group of women have also been leaders in their art centres and prolific, consistent and innovative artists and printmakers over many years.

The art of mother and daughter duo Jean Baptiste Apuatimi (dec) and Maria Josette Orsto emanates from a deep knowledge of Tiwi culture and ceremonies. Their innovative and powerful designs are characterised by the constant exploration of new ways of expressing connections to their culture.

Raelene Kerinauia is a celebrated artist and finalist in the 2020 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards in Darwin and won the Telstra Bark Painting Award in 2011. She is well-known for painting with the kayimwagakimi (ironwood comb).

Janice Murray is celebrated for her depictions of a vast array of Tiwi birds. Her works incorporate the body designs used in the Pukamani ceremony. The geometric patterns reference stories of mythological significance involving ancestors who were changed into animals or birds.

Tiwi art is unique; inspired by the distinct language, ceremonies and material culture of the Tiwi people. Tiwi art is often inspired by two significant ceremonial rituals, Pukumani (mourning ceremony) and Kulama (initiation or yam ceremony) which echo Tiwi cosmology and origin myths of the Tiwi.

Painted designs are based on patterns of lines and dots derived from ritual body paintings, however emphasis is also placed on innovation and individuality rather than associations with totemic groups or kinship systems. The result is powerful and individual imagery created within the bounds of natural pigments. Jean Baptiste Apuatimi, Maria Josette Orsto, Raelene Kerinauia and Janice Murray are extraordinary exponents of this convergence of freedom and constraint informed by the powerful heritage of Tiwi culture.

View works online:

Jean Baptiste Apuatimi (dec)

Maria Josette Orsto

Raelene Kerinauia

Janice Murray