Carving into Country: The work of Badger Bates
When I carve I feel I am carving new life into my country and I can hear my old Granny and the other old people singing in the language.
More from this Issue
Thancoupie/Thanakupi (1937–2011)
Thancoupie (aka Dr Thancoupie Gloria Fletcher James AO) was a trailblazer in Aboriginal art, studying, showing and making work in ceramics for many years. Her work was shown nationally and internationally. After many years she returned home to Weipa, and while still making and exhibiting, focused much of her attention on her family, community, land rights and the next generations.
Rainforest identity (past and future)
Napolean Oui is a Cairns-based, mid-career, Djabugay artist and a proud advocate of the rainforest art style unique to Far North Queensland. 2012 was a breakthrough year for him, he did a residency at Studio PM with Paul Machnik and others in Montreal, developed new work at Djumbunji Press for a solo show at Kickarts Contemporary Arts in Cairns during the Art Fair, AND sold work to the National Gallery of Australia.
Rekospective
Yorta Yorta and Wiradjuri curator and lecturer Jirra Harvey traces the career of self-taught graffiti and studio artist Reko Rennie. He uses a traditional Kamilaroi patterning in neon and in graffiti as a contemporary statement of sovereignity. Harvey says: "The subtext to such works is a running narrative on government practices that work to control and restrain Aboriginal communities and the subsequent rebellion of the people."
String theory: Karen Mills
Michelle Culpitt examines the work practice of Northern Territory artist Karen Mills whose paintings are inspired by the string bags made by the women weavers of Arnhem Land. Culpitt writes: "The articulation of her painterly vision is only possible at the nexus of her experience and influences as an Aboriginal woman in contemporary Australia, a place of both deep connection and belonging to country, and also disjuncture and dislocation from a nation in denial of its own history."
Jean Baptiste Apuatimi (1940–2013)
Curator of Asian Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia James Bennett writes with affection about the life and work of highly respected Tiwi artist Jean Baptiste Apuatimi. He describes the way she would not repeat a formula in her art but constantly push aesthetic boundaries in exploring new themes.
New currency: Ryan Presley
Ryan Presley's 2011 series 'Blood Money' is remarkable. These commemorative banknotes substitute the heroes of the white Australian monoculture (Banjo Patterson, Dame Mary Gilmore, Dame Nellie Melba and Sir Henry Parkes) with Aboriginal heroes, resistance fighters such as Pemulwuy, his son Tjedaberiyn (also known as Tedbury), Dundalli and Jandamarra and others such as the Gurindji stockman Vincent Lingiari who led the Wave Hill walk-off, and the late Wik elder Gladys Tybingoompa.
Gulumbu Yunupingu (1943–2012)
People in Nhulunbuy still talk wonderingly about the last days of Gulumbu Yunupingu’s life. Something happened. Something changed. For nine days the monolithic concrete hospital in the sterile mining town threw open its doors and for nine days the Yolngu ceremony ground flowed in.
The road to Pormpuraaw
Filmmaker Peter Hylands writes about a recent visit to the remote Pormpuraaw Art Centre in Far North Queensland. Here he talks with artist Sid Bruce Short Joe who speaks nine languages, the ninth is English.
The limits of criticism
Anthropologist John Carty casts his eyes over the last ten years of writing on Desert art, mostly in newspapers, and finds many cliches and inconsistencies. He asks: "Where are the fine-grained localised art histories, the rich biographies of our most interesting and important individual artists? Where are their voices?" And replies: "They are still waiting in the Desert."