Contributors
Cath Bowdler
After 15 years in the Northern Territory and three years completing a PhD in Indigenous visual art at the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at the ANU, Cath Bowdler is now Director of the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery.
Articles
Groggy: Therese Ritchie, Todd Williams
Northern Territory Centre for Contemporary Art (NCCA), Darwin 13 September – 12 October 2013
Mining: Gouging the Country
Not just black and white
Scholar and inaugural director of the new Godinymayin Yijard Rivers Arts and Culture Centre in Katherine Cath Bowdler discusses the work of two indigenous artists Brook Andrew and Gunybi Ganambarr and suggests that they are both operating at a conceptual level as bricoleurs in a globalised world, inventing new juxtapositions of materials and revealing new ways of seeing the world through the prism of local histories and traditions.
Pattern & Complexity
Yalangabara: Art of the Djang'kawu
'Yalangabara: Art of the Djang'kawu' curated by Banduk Marika and Margie West includes art made from 1939 till recently. All works are about the same creation story and all comprise a history of creative and spiritual custodianship by the Marika family of the Rirratjingu clan.
Indigenous: Beauty & Terror
Firing across the gaps
In May 2008 Wagga Wagga Art Gallery's new Director Cath Bowdler curated Crossfire, an exhibition of resonating artworks from the Gallery's two major collections, the National Art Glass Collection and the Margaret Carnegie Print Collection, as a way of introducing herself to both the space and the place. Bowdler was initially inspired by the glass work Salt on Mina Mina by Dorothy Napangardi.
Curating : Creating
Shimmering fields
An essay on Indigenous aesthetics in the paintings of John Mawurndjul and Gulumbu Yunupingu from Arnhem Land, and Doreen Reid Nakamarra form the Central Desert as their work appears in the exhibition Culture Warriors, the first Indigenous Triennial, curated by Brenda Croft and reviewed in Artlink (Vol 27 #4) by Daniel Thomas. 'Their works are site-specific, alive with meaning and essentially metaphysical and religious in conception. For these artists beauty equals power, the power of the creation stories that underpin their art.'
Art Mind Beauty
Looking Forward Looking Back: in the East Kimberly
Marrying visual art, dance and inspirational rhetoric has been one of the hallmarks of the Jirrawun Artists Co-operation operating out of Kununarra. These traditional people have been at the forefront of contemporary political debates and Indigenous art practice. Cath Bowdler follows the story of Jirrawun Artists Co-operation from its inception in 1998 to the present day. A non-government funded body, Pro bono partnerships with the corporate and private sector.
Remote
Barney and Tibby Ellaga
New paintings from SE Arnhem Land at Raft Artspace, Darwin, 1- 23 April, 2005
Stirring
Naming and Reclaiming: The Searching Eye of Pam Lofts
Central Australia remains at the post-colonial interface where issues such as reconciliation, cultural dislocation and otherness are daily issues. Examines the work of Pam Lofts and her relationship as a white artist working in such an environment. Explores the distinctions between the European concept of landscape and the indigenous focus on country.
Disintegration