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Rosella Namok’s second solo art show
by Miriam Grundy
C
oo-ee gallery is delighted to present Rosella Namok’s second solo show since joining the gallery in 2011. Namok returns to Cooee fresh from her latest project, a collaboration with the Houston Ballet designing and painting the dramatic backdrops for their production of The Rite of Spring. Her latest works are a meditative exploration of stories of place and people from her birthplace, the Lockheart River. Rosella Namok
first appeared on the contemporary art scene in the late 1990s and has become the most successful artist to come out of far North Queensland’s renowned Lockhart River ‘Art Gang’. Her paintings revolve loosely around several narratives of her social, physical, and natural, environment. They feature events such as hunting and fishing expeditions, weather patterns of rain and wind or the traditional stories of Kapay and Kuyan, the two opposing moieties that govern
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marriage relations in her Ungkum community. Her fluid and loose colour fields create a distinctive modern style that rooted in the cultural framework from which she draws her subject. An abstractionist, Namok conjures up the mood and fluctuations of her daily life in her physical environment and community. Her processes of applying, stripping back and working into the paint builds visual a plane of fine layers of translucent colour and subtle texture. Since her first solo exhibition in 1999 at the Hogarth Gallery in Sydney, Namok has
developed and refined her practice to become one of the most influential and collectable contemporary female artists. At just 23 she was reputedly the highest grossing Australian artist of her age. In 2001 and 2002 she was listed in Art Collector’s 50 most collectable artists. It is extraordinary to think that Namok, 34, has already had more than fifteen solo exhibitions at galleries of the quality of the Hogarth Gallery in Sydney, Andrew Baker Gallery in Brisbane, and Niagara Gallery in Melbourne as well as October Gallery in
London. In addition, her works has been shown in Paris, Washington, Georgia, Berlin, Austria and Slovenia. Roeslla Namok has been the recipient on numerous prizes including the Lin Onus Youth Award, 2000; High Court Centenary Art Award, 2003; The Redlands Art Prize, 2003; National Indigenous Heritage Art Awards, 2004. She is represented in a number of important Australian and international collections including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, The National Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art
Sydney, National Gallery of Victoria and the KlugeRuhe Museum, USA. Coo-ee Aboriginal Art Gallery presents Rosella Namok’s exhibition Yangkuyi...Wet Season Opening Night June 13, 6-8pm with exclusive in-conversation with the artist. Exhibition continues June 13 – July 20, 2013 To be held at Coo-ee Gallery, 31 Lamrock Avenue Bondi Beach 2026, directions at http:// www.cooeeart.com.au/ Exhibition and opening night talk is free & open to the public.