WANGKATJUNGKA ARTISTS: BIDDEE BAADJO & NADA RAWLINS
From: Apr 08, 2010
Until: May 02, 2010
This beautiful survey exhibition of works by senior Wangkatjungka women recalls their ancestral lands.
The Aboriginal art community of Wangkatjungka is located at the northern end of the Canning Stock route, 120 kms south east of Fitzroy Crossing, and 200 kms south west of Halls Creek. The Community formed over the years following establishment of the Canning Stock Route - an exodus of Aboriginal people followed it north from the Great Sandy Desert and beyond.
Wangkatjungka artist Biddee Baadjo, like Sally Gabori, is a senior woman artist whose art packs a powerful punch! Biddee paints memories of her country in sublime colour fusions and bursts of dramatic intensity. In sure control of her brush, her strong surface design has a sublime textural quality, where surprising, blending, colour fields shift with subtle alterations of the light. Biddee's linear designs recall the long sandhills of the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia, and trace the underground water sources so significant to her people. At the centre of almost all of Biddee's paintings is the iconic waterhole, around which 'the people's' all important stories revolve. Even though Biddee has lived in the East Kimberley region far from her Great Sandy Desert homelands for nearly 60 years, her memories run deep, and are expressed in these hauntingly beautiful works.
Fellow artist Nada Rawlins' family were custodians of southern stretches of the Wangkatjungka people's country. Her paintings too, feature still, iconic saltlakes, creek beds or water holes, which float suspended on a shifting sea of colour and light, created by Nada's soft dotting style of alternating hues. Her waterholes are bright blue, and often curiously surrounded by representations of salt, or 'living water' as the central piece to her work. For the patient viewer the depth and dimension of the works is slowly revealed in the ever-changing effects of colour and light. One of Nada's paintings is, deservingly, in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia.
We welcome you to view this beautiful exhibition in our upstairs gallery throughout April until the 2nd of May. Web sales are also available and enquiries may be made through the website (www.kateowengallery.com) or by telephoning +612 95555283 or +614 00508050
(Australia: 02_95555283 or 0400508050)
