110 53999 - Paddy Jupurrurla Nelson 'Yanjilypiri Jukurrpa (Star Dreaming)' 1985
Paddy Jupurrurla Nelson
Kwentwentjay Jungurrayi Spencer
Paddy Japaljarri Sims
Warlpiri people
'Yanjilypiri Jukurrpa (Star Dreaming)' 1985
Purchased 1986
© Kwentwentjay Jungurrayi Spencer / Paddy Jupurrurla Nelson / Paddy Japaljarri Sims. Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia
The Warlpiri-speaking community of Yuendumu lies approximately 100 kilometres north of Papunya in the Northern Territory. It was established in 1946 by the Australian government to deliver rations and welfare services to Aboriginal people in the surrounding district. Yuendumu was the first Aboriginal community in the Western Desert region to begin painting for the art market, after Papunya. Senior Warlpiri men knew of developments at Papunya in the 1970s, but were reluctant to paint for the public domain. In the early 1980s, the first artists at Yuendumu to produce paintings were Warlpiri women. Then, in 1983, a group of senior men including Paddy Sims, Larry Spencer and Paddy Nelson, painted the 30 doors of the local school with Jukurrpa images to remind the students of their traditional education. The project encouraged this senior group and other Warlpiri artists to paint on canvas on a large scale for exhibition. Within two years they had established their own art centre, Warlukurlangu Artists.
Yanjilypiri Jukurrpa (Star Dreaming) 1985 is one of the first large canvases to emerge from Yuendumu. This magnificent work by three senior Warlpiri men relates to the fire ceremony of the Warlpiri, and is associated with the creation of the constellations. While the artists remained circumspect about the deeper levels of interpretation of the imagery, they described the dominant central motif as a ceremonial ground painting upon which the Fire Ceremony is performed. Participants shake smouldering branches and the embers float into the night sky to create the constellations represented by the circles and stars surrounding the ground painting. In turn, the ground painting can be seen as an evocation of the earth.
A feature of Yuendumu paintings is that many are produced collaboratively. Contributors are involved as either kirda (owners of the Jukurrpa through the patrilineal line) or as kurdungurlu (managers of the Jukurrpa through the matrilineal line). Jimija Jungurrayi Spencer (1908--1989), the owner of the Star Dreaming, supervised this painting but did not participate. The main painter was Paddy Nelson who had matrilineally-inherited rights to the Dreaming. Paddy Sims and Jimija's younger brother, Larry Spencer, assisted.
Franchesca Cubillo
Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2010
From: Franchesca Cubillo and Wally Caruana (eds) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art: collection highlights National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2010
Unreserved Aboriginal Art Clearance | Feature Artist
Find your piece here:
Aboriginal Artist Gloria Petyarre has been dubbed “one of the most collectable indigenous artists” by Art Collector magazine and is arguably one of the most influential women in Aboriginal Art.
Her work has been exhibited in collections across Australia including the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney and the Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin, just to name a few.
Her paintings depict dreamtime stories told to her by her Father and display an array of vibrant acrylic colours painted on canvas.
We have a number of Gloria’s artwork in our Unreserved Aboriginal Art Spectacular Auction with paintings from other significant artists including Patricia Kamara, Gracie Morton, Nellie Marks and Mandy Marshall amongst many others.
My Dream Australia. Goomblar Wylo
My Dream with the Aboriginal musician, artist, and community activist, Goomblar Wylo, taped in Brisbane, Australia, with special thanks to the Brisbane City Council. The video was produced for Dance the Dream Sydney, which is sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Canberra in partnership with OWLKEYME, #NSWpublicschools, #NSWReconciliationCouncil, and #BlakDance. Everyone is invited to participate in Dance the Dream Sydney, which is taking place on December 13, 2015, at the Sydney Opera House Forecourt. For information on Dance the Dream and The Dream at 50 project please visit our Facebook page at, facebook.com/The-Dream-at-50-303873089647845/.
Defending culture
Yidinji artist Bindur Bullin, also known as Paul Bong, talks about the meaning of the designs on his shields and the importance of the protection that a shield may offer in the world today. More:
BRISBANE: Unique ABORIGINAL (INDIGENOUS) AUSTRALIAN ART, MUSEUM OF MODERN ART ????
SUBSCRIBE: - Let's visit the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) which is an art museum located in the South Bank precinct of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. GOMA opened on 2 December 2006 and it is situated on Kurilpa Point and it faces the Brisbane River and the CBD. We are going to view the Indigenous Art collection which has a focus on contemporary art, including paintings, sculpture and a collection of contemporary Indigenous Australian fibre art from across the country, with objects made from natural and introduced materials.
Brisbane, capital of Queensland, is a large city on the Brisbane River. Clustered in its South Bank cultural precinct are the Queensland Museum and Sciencentre, with noted interactive exhibitions. Another South Bank cultural institution is Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, among Australia's major contemporary art museums. Looming over the city is Mt. Coot-tha, site of Brisbane Botanic Gardens.
Australia is a country and continent surrounded by the Indian and Pacific oceans. Its major cities – Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide – are coastal. Its capital, Canberra, is inland. The country is known for its Sydney Opera House, the Great Barrier Reef, a vast interior desert wilderness called the Outback, and unique animal species like kangaroos and duck-billed platypuses.
Vic Stefanu, vstefanu@yahoo.com.
#VicStefanu
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Clifford Possums Smashes World Aboriginal Auction Record
July 24th, 2007 at Sotheby's, Melbourne, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri smashed the world record for Australian Aboriginal Art establishing the fact that he is Australia's Greatest Artist.
The work Warlugulong, 1977 was an Australian Masterpiece 202cm x 337.5cm, Synthetic Polymer Paint on Canvas was purchased by the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.
arandaart.com
111 - 167409 - Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri 'Warlugulong' 1977
Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri
Anmatyerre/Arrernte peoples
'Warlugulong' 1977
Purchased with the generous assistance of Roslynne Bracher and the Paspaley Family, David Coe and Michelle Coe, Charles Curran and Eva Curran 2007
© the estate of the artist licensed by Aboriginal Artists Agency
Warlugulong is the Anmatyerr name for a site 200 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs where, in ancestral times, Lungkata the Blue-Tongue Lizard Man created the first great bushfire. The main significance of this Dreaming or Tjukurrpa lies in the fact that it connects a number of language groups across the western deserts, and it is one of the most important for the artist's Anmatyerr people. The painting is one of five large canvases Clifford PossumTjapaltjarri produced from 1976 to 1979 to map his ancestral lands and their Tjukurrpa in a way that integrated the sacred diagrams of ceremonial ground paintings and the topographical conventions of European maps. Tjapaltjarri's templates for this magnum opus are also in the national collection: Bushfire I and Bushfire II both painted in 1972.
Warlugulong1977, however, is a palimpsest of nine distinct Dreamings. The main subject of the painting is Lungkata's punishment of his two sons who did not share their catch of kangaroo with their father, as is customary. The skeletons of the two boys are depicted in the atmospheric effect of charred earth, smoke and ash on the right. The orientation of the depiction of this Tjukurrpa places the cardinal point of the east at the top edge of the painting.
The remaining Tjukurrpa paths are depicted so that the top edge points to the south. In effect, to marry the different orientations, Tjapaltjarri has turned the canvas through 90 degrees. These Dreamings include a group of women from Aileron dancing across the land, represented by their footprints in the top right running laterally across the canvas. Below these are the tracks of a large group of Emus returning to Napperby (the artist's homeland). The footprints of the Mala or Rock Wallaby Men, travelling north from the area around present-day Port Augusta (in South Australia), can be seen in the vertical line of wallaby tracks to the left of centre. Further to the left are the tracks left by the legendary Chase of the Goanna Men. And the tracks of the Tjangala and Nungurrayi Dingoes travelling to Warrabri appear along the left edge of the painting. The footprints of a Tjungurrayi man who attempted to steal sacred objects run laterally along the lower edge towards a skeleton in the lower left, indicating the man's fate.
A family travelling to Ngama is represented by their footprints aligned vertically in the right third of the canvas, while the tracks of Upambura the Possum Man run along the meandering white and yellow lines that provide the compositional structure of the painting.
Franchesca Cubillo and Wally Caruana
Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2010
From: Franchesca Cubillo and Wally Caruana (eds) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art: collection highlights National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2010
Narara's Aboriginal rock carvings and cave paintings .. Central Coast
A Central Coast Aboriginal Site, found at the back of Narara..... . Rock Carvings and Cave Paintings..... Easy Mountain Bike ride off Reeves Rd.
Aboriginal Art ELIZABETH MARKS NAKAMARRA 0784
Artist: ELIZABETH MARKS NAKAMARRA
Dreaming: SOAKAGE
Painted in Alice Springs 2010
Contact: info@desertartcentre.com.au
Dreamtime Dancers
Animated drawings of mystical figures by Brian McCormack. Backgrounds are abstract cray-paz drawings and figures from a series entitled Dreamtime Dancers. Can be seen in a current retrospective show of his work at the Hamilton Street Gallery in Bound Brook New Jersey entitled Too Eclectic hamiltonstreetgallery.com 732-748-2092
104 - 92142 - John Mawurndjul AM 'Rainbow Serpent (Ngalyod) with female mimi spirit' 1984
John Mawurndjul AM
Kuninjku (Eastern Kunwinjku) people
'Rainbow Serpent (Ngalyod) with female mimi spirit' 1984
Purchased 1984
© John Mawurndjul. Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia
Since the early 1990s John Mawurndjul has been living and working in his traditional country at Milmilngkan, an outstation near the larger settlement of Maningrida.
Mawurndjul's early paintings often contained figurative references—Ngalyod (the rainbow serpent), yawkyawk spirits, animals and ancestral beings—as well as visual references to the culturally sacred Mardayin ceremonial designs. Mardayin designs were originally painted on the bodies of young initiates to indicate their connections to their ancestral homelands, mapping their country in physical form.
As Mawurndjul's recent bark paintings and lorrikitj (hollow funeral poles) have become more refined and intricate, the presence of Mardayin designs has come to dominate his oeuvre. Still embedded within these increasingly abstracted Mardayin forms are sacred stories of law.
The visual effect of these prismatic grids is almost hypnotic and a deliberate intention of the artist to suggest the incredible ancestral power inherent in his art. The thin and delicate rarrk heralds the power of ancestral beings who inhabit Western Arnhem Land and demonstrate Mawurndjul's masterful and dynamic arrangement of rarrk.
Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2010
From: Ron Radford (ed), Collection highlights: National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2008
HMAS Arunta indigenous smoking ceremony
HMAS Arunta Ships Company has hosted indigenous smoking ceremony in acknowledgement of their affiliation with the Arrernte people in Darwin. The ceremony was performed on the flight deck by visitors from the Arrernte tribe, with the aroma of the smoke bringing power and strength.
The selection of the Arunta name recognises the ship’s proud history and the ongoing and special relationship with the Arrernte Aboriginal people. Arunta has a close affiliation with the Arrernte people, and extending an invitation to conduct a Smoking Ceremony onboard presented a unique opportunity to strengthen this relationship.
This event coincides with the commencement of NAIDOC Week, which is recognised across Australia as a celebration of the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People.
The ship is visiting Darwin to participate in Exercise Talisman Sabre 2015 - the largest combined military exercise undertaken by the Australian Defence Force. TS15 provides invaluable experience to ADF personnel to improve combat training, readiness and interoperability, exposing participants to a wide spectrum of military capabilities and training experiences.
#NAIDOC #YourADF #TalismanSabre #TS15 #AusNavy #HMASArunta #Arrernte #NAIDOCWeek #NAIDOC
Ghillar, Michael Anderson & PaulCoe at ACTIVISM in Canberra
Ghillar, Michael Anderson and Paul Coe, who played key roles in the 1972 Aboriginal Embassy, bring into sharp focus contemporary issues confronting First Nations and Peoples in Australia - asserting sovereignty; colonialism; oppression; kidnapping of children; desecration of lands; uncontrolled mining and land clearing etc.
More info: sovereignunion.mobi
Recorded at CMAG Canberra Museum And Gallery on 5 September 2019 and introduced by CMAG senior curator Rowen Henderson of 'Activism in Canberra' exhibition.
112 - 119248 - Emily Kam Kngwarray 'Ntange Dreaming' 1989
Emily Kam Kngwarray
Anmatyerr people
'Ntange Dreaming' 1989
Purchased 1989
© Emily Kam Kngwarray. Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia
Emily Kam Kngwarray is regarded as a phenomenon in Australian art. She worked with immense speed and assurance for an elderly woman who, it is popularly believed, started painting in her seventies—moving from batiks to acrylic on canvas in 1988. In a brief eight-year painting career, Kngwarray produced an extraordinary number of canvases, reputed to be as many as 3000—an average of a canvas a day. To the art world, both her output and her seemingly 'abstract', gestural style were unlike anything previously seen from an Aboriginal painter. Far from being an overnight sensation, however, Kngwarray's works are the culmination of a lifetime of making art for ceremonial purposes. By the time she took up a paintbrush and acrylic paints, Kngwarray was a truly experienced artist.
In Kngwarray's paintings, symbols are used sparingly to transcend the narrative aspect of the Dreamings they evoke. Her strong marks and fields of colour express the resonance of ancestral power in the landscape, in the same way that rarrk (crosshatching) does in Arnhem Land bark paintings. The three paintings illustrated here reveal a range of approaches to painting that she developed over the span her acrylic painting career.
Traditionally, Kngwarray's main concern was with the atnwelarr (pencil yam), a creeper with bright-green leaves, yellow flowers and edible roots. Her name, 'Kam', means the seeds and flowers of the pencil yam plant. The practice of naming a person after a particular feature of a Dreaming emphasises their connection to the Creation.
One of her earliest canvas paintings, Ntange Dreaming 1989, is akin to a self-portrait but not in the sense that Kngwarray has made an image of her face or her physical features. Rather it is an image of her identity expressed in terms of her ceremonial status, her role in Anmatyerr society and her intimate relationship with the ancestrally created landscape of her birth. Ntange Dreaming is composed of a series of awely, or designs that are painted onto women's breasts, arms and torsos in ceremonies. Overlaying these, Kngwarray has applied lines of dots using her fingers directly onto the canvas, in the same way designs may be applied to the body. The dots themselves signify the seed of the native grasses (called 'ntange' in Anmatyerr) that women collect and grind into a paste to make damper.
Anoranngait, healing plant 1990, painted the year after Ntange Dreaming, reveals a more formal side of the artist's oeuvre. The application of the paint is consistent with the 1989 painting but the palette is relatively subdued and the composition more regular. Kngwarray explained the related subject of the painting in the following manner. When a child or adult falls ill in the artist's country, women collect the leaves of a fuchsia-type shrub called anoranngait and boil them in water to produce a light but strong green liquid, which is washed over the body, particularly on the affected areas. The artist described the bathing motion with scooped hands and splashing motions over her chest and stomach. The painting is her adaptation of the traditional liturgies for aligning ceremonial participants with the healing powers of nature. The stippled patterns depict the medicinal plant, evoke the shimmering heat haze, suggest an aura of supernatural power, and can even extend to the all-encompassing canopy of stars in the night sky.
Yam awely 1995 was a major undertaking in the final year of the artist's life. In contrast to the intimate detail of Ntange Dreaming and Anoranngait, healing plant, Kngwarray now extended her brush mark to the radius achieved by the full sweep of her arm, thus relating the painting directly to the human scale despite its monumentality, in a manner similar to that Jackson Pollock achieved in Blue poles 1952. The free-flowing gestural nature of the brush marks in Yam awelye is derived from another traditional source of inspiration, that being the palimpsests of sand drawings made by desert women as part of a spoken narrative and storytelling.
Kngwarray was intensely traditional in her life and outlook, yet her work challenges pre-existing notions of the 'traditional' in Aboriginal art.
Franchesca Cubillo and Wally Caruana
Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2010
From: Franchesca Cubillo and Wally Caruana (eds) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art: collection highlights National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2010
Challenging the meaning of Aboriginal art | ABC News
A new exhibition at the Bendigo Art Gallery in Victoria is set to challenge the idea of what makes Indigenous art. The pieces are bright, bold and interactive, and while it's a long way from traditional Indigenous painting, the young artist who made them says they're simply a modern take on Aboriginal storytelling.
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108 - 96051 - Rover Thomas [Joolama] 'The Dreaming Kangaroo at Nine Mile, near Wyndham' 1983
Rover Thomas [Joolama]
Kukatja/Wangkajunga peoples
Paddy Jaminji
Gija people
'The Dreaming Kangaroo at Nine Mile, near Wyndham' 1983
Purchased 1984
© the artists' estates, courtesy Warmun Art Centre
Paddy Jaminji was born and has lived most of his life on Bedford Downs Station in the Kimberley. Like many of his countrymen, as a teenager and an adult he worked as a stockman at Bedford Downs, and later at the old Lissadell Station.
Rover Thomas (Joolama) spent most of his life working as a stockman in the eastern Kimberley in the north of Western Australia. He began painting on a regular basis in 1981, and within a decade his vigorous and prolific creativity led to his selection as one of the first two Indigenous artists to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale, in 1990.
In the mid 1980s the Aboriginal community of Warmun, adjacent to Turkey Creek, was the first in the East Kimberley to be recognised as a distinctive artistic region, widening non-Indigenous perspectives of Indigenous art, which had been preoccupied with the Arnhem Land and the Western Desert art traditions.
Jaminji worked closely with his colleague Thomas on the Kurirr Kurirrdance-drama. Although receiver of the ceremony, Thomas painted this board in collaboration with his mother's brother, Paddy Jaminji.
Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2010
From: Ron Radford (ed), Collection highlights: National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2008
21 62278 - Tom Roberts 'Allegro con brio, Bourke Street west' c. 1885--86
Tom Roberts
'Allegro con brio, Bourke Street west' c. 1885--86, with additions 1890
National Library of Australia and National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Doongal Aboriginal Art
Art & Artefacts from Central Australian Aboriginal Artists & Aboriginal Rainforest Artists from Far North Queensland, Australia.
99 - 145348 - David Malangi Daymirringu 'Gurrmirringu's wife' c. 1968
David Malangi Daymirringu
Manharrngu people
'Gurrmirringu's wife' c. 1968
Purchased 2005
© David Malangi Daymirringu. Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia
Gurrmirringu is the first ancestor of the Dhuwa moiety Manharrngu clan of Central Arnhem Land. After a successful day hunting, Gurrmirringu was returning home to his wife. On the way he made camp under a Wurrumbuku or white berry tree, where he was poisoned by an evil spirit in the form of a Darrpa, or king brown snake. His death gave rise to the first mortuary rites of the Manharrngu people, in which the story of Gurrmirringu's life and death is re-enacted in dance and song.
The figure of Gurrmirringu's wife, made for the public domain and not for a ceremonial purpose, is decorated with images of the Wurrumbuku across the chest, arms and thighs, and with Manharrngu ceremonial designs on its abdomen. A decorated dilly bag, carved in low relief, hangs from the figure's neck at the back. The dilly bag has a snake painted on its surface. The figure's right arm is bent around the back as though to take the weight of the dilly bag. The protruding face is characteristic of David Malangi Daymirringu's sculptures.
Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2010
From: Ron Radford (ed), Collection highlights: National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2008
Old Masters: Australia's Great Bark Artists
Learn about the Arnhem Land artists and works from the world's largest collection of bark paintings on show in the exhibition 'Old Masters: Australia's Great Bark Artists'. More:
Warning: Viewers should be aware that this video includes the names and images of deceased people that may cause sadness or distress to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.