So enough about things which have long past, however important they may be.
This is an exhibition I went to with a friend recently and would highly recommend to anyone! Even those of you who aren't big fans of Aboriginal art. However it wasn't just Aboriginal art being exhibited, it was Australian art in general. This meant that there was a lovely variety in the styles of art. It was also great to see Australian art exhibited together without prejudice. The exhibition was, not only free, but I left as a different person.... and I enjoyed it so much that I even bought a souvenir in the gift shop so I could take a memory of the exhibition home with me. There were so many exciting paintings in the Sprit in the Land exhibition I'm afraid I'd be here forever just talking about them, so I'm going to show you my favorites.
The first two we seen were both my Rover Thomas (Joolama) and were both very traditional in the style of art from the Kimberly region (large blocks of colour, very limited palette) however they both had an extremely different feel to them. The first piece was 'Gula Gula', 1989 (below) which felt natural and bright, it made me feel happy and at ease. It looked like an arial view of the land, and Rover Thomas is well known for his paintings of East Kimberly landscape.
The second of Rover Thomas work we seen was called 'Bedford Downs', 1984 (below). Right away this paining felt dark and gloomy. It was uninviting and had a negative feel. Then, in reading the caption, I came to find that it was depicting massacres which had happened in that region and were particularly horrible. I found it to be quite amazing that I got all these feelings about this painting, before I'd even read the caption. I had no idea what the painting was about, however I knew everything at the same time because of how it made me feel. The painting was so well depicted, in all its abstraction, that it nearly didn't even need the caption at all. However this painting really emphasises the feelings produced when reading about the massacres.
Lin Onus was born of Yorta Yorta and Scottish decent. I like his work 'Ginger and my third wife approach the roundabout',1994 (below) not only because it's visually exciting, but because it mixes traditional work with realist styles which I find very interesting. It's addressing the gap between Aboriginal and Western people. The sand represented was unbelievably detailed with millions of different coloured dots layered upon each other and the creatures represented are actually painted with the intricate crosshatching, restricted palette and natural pigments reminiscent of works from the Arnhem lands.
Dorothy Napangardi's 'Sandhills of Mina Mina, 2000' (below) speaks for itself really. With beautiful colours, and unimaginably intricate patterns this piece undoubtably represents the sand dunes it depicts. The thing about this piece that I love more than anything else it's feeling of movement. Without it, I don't think it would represent 'sand dunes' half as well. However, when viewing this work in the gallery, I found it hard to focus on due to the amount of information in the work and the intricateness.
