DREAM MINE TIME Exhibition Catalogue by FORM WA

Curated by Kate Alida Mullen

Cover image: Ben Ward, Pigeon Dreaming (detail), 2017, natural ochre and pigment on canvas, 80 x 100 cm. Image courtesy of Waringarri Aboriginal Arts and Mossenson Galleries.

Right: Billy Yunkurrra Atkins, Kumpupirntily (Lake Disappointment), 2017, gouache on arches paper, 102 x 154 cm. Image courtesy of Martumili Artists.

Nyapuru (William) Gardiner, Stockman, 2015, pen and pencil on paper, 30 x 42 cm. Image courtesy of Spinifex Hill Artists.

CURATORIAL FORWARD

DREAM MINE TIME brings together a series of leading, contemporary Aboriginal artists from across Western Australia whose works in some way attest the reality of a living and a modern Dreaming.

Featuring new sand animation, sculpture, drawing and painting, senior artists illuminate ancient stories that have been adapted in recent years to incorporate the shifts brought on by postcolonial industry. Their works show alongside examples of new Dreaming stories, birthed and shared by a younger generation of artists. The word ‘Dreamtime’ itself is a late 19th century attempt by European anthropologists to translate the fullness of Aboriginal cosmology into the English vernacular. DREAM MINE TIME explores the complexities of what ‘Dreamtime’ means for these artists, in 2018, within their respective regions of a vast State. The artworks speak of the unique relationship each artist holds with their Country’s Dreaming, and how these connections infuse the everyday. The exhibition’s title draws from poem ‘Dream Mine Time Animals’ by Geraldton-based poet and artist Charmaine Green (Yamaji Art Geraldton) who, for this showcase, has realised the words of her lyrical work into moving image using stop motion animation and iron ore dust.

Judith Yinyika Chambers, Cutting the Road, 2017, acrylic and tin on plywood, 60 x 90 cm. Photograph by Bewley Shaylor.

Green’s animation shows alongside new works made with organic pigment by revered senior artists Mabel Juli, Nancy Nodea and Phyllis Thomas (Warmun Art Centre, Warmun) who, for this project, have collectively embarked on a mapping of sites where new and old stories collide on their Gija Country in the East Kimberley; stories describing ancient Ngarranggarni (Dreaming) landforms that today exist amid the cattle stations the artists worked on as young women. For DREAM MINE TIME, Ben Ward (Waringarri Aboriginal Arts, Kununurra) presents a series of new and recent ochre renditions of his Country. These intimate and meticulous portraits tell of irrevocable interventions on the artist’s land, namely at Lake Argyle and Ivanhoe Ranges. East Kimberley’s Lake Argyle stands today as Australia’s second largest artificial fresh water reservoir, built in 1971. Before the establishment of the dam, Ward lived upon the now submerged Country. With his geographical

Following his taking home of the award for Most Outstanding

compass still strong in his memory, the artist persists in depicting

Work at the 2017 Hedland Art Awards, Billy Yunkurra Atkins

in ochre the sacred sites and songlines he once walked.

(Martumili Artists, Newman) relays one of his most significant Jukurrpa (Dreaming) stories for DREAM MINE TIME, with

A series of new paintings by the prolific Clifton Mack (Yinjaa-

two epic gouache works on paper. These paintings articulate

Barni Art, Roebourne) detail particular historical landmarks in

Kumpupirntily, or Lake Disappointment, one of the most

Yindjibarndi Country that have been forged by the combined

dangerous sites in the far Western Desert with cannibal

presence of Aboriginal and non-Indigenous occupation on the

beings said to live beneath its surface. With the perpetual

land. These include the iconic lighthouse on Jarman Island off

encroachment of mining in the area, Yunkurra’s inherited

the coast of Cossack – a compelling symbol of white man’s

responsibility to protect people from the lake’s dormant threats

arrival upon Mack’s father’s Rainmaking Country.

weighs as heavily on him today as it once did for his ancestors.

Martu filmmaker and artist Curtis Taylor (Perth) has worked on

Artists, Warakurna), together offer a portrait of how the

a number of film and multi-media productions, including Lynette

songlines traversing their land have been transformed during

Wallworth’s Emmy Award winning work Collisions. In recent

their lifetimes. With the introduction of new machinery and

years, Taylor has turned his hand to sculptural wood and fibre

technology, these artists took part in the physical task of cutting

work and DREAM MINE TIME unveils a new series of his tactile

the first major roads through the Gibson Desert – a development

installations wielded from wood sourced from his homeland in

that redefined the way the artists and their people move

the East Pilbara. These works speak of the legacy of Taylor’s

through their land.

late grandfather, a senior Martu composer of songs, and the ongoing potency of his living memory within the Martu culture

Imaginative paintings by Victor Burton (Spinifex Hill Artists,

and psyche. Taylor’s work draws emphasis upon the centrality of

Port Hedland) tell of elaborate Creation Beings that continue

memory as the essential vehicle, or life force, of dreams.

to breath and move through Country, influencing the elements. Nyapuru (William) Gardiner (Spinifex Hill Artists, Port Hedland)

Showing beside his Mother, Nancy Nodea, Gabriel Nodea

depicts in acute detail the development of pastoral industries

(Warmun Art Centre) has produced new work for DREAM

upon his Country, and the new forms of labour it elicited for his

MINE TIME that visually portrays some of the visitations he has

old people.

experienced firsthand, in his sleep: ‘Dreams got to come to you. It’s powerful, when it gets into you. It’s like someone wants to

A wealth of some of the oldest stories in human history are

pass something on to you’. While Nodea acknowledges the

interwoven with the Western Australian landscape, kept alive for

dramatic shifts his people have had to adapt to, he remains an

more than 60,000 years through oral traditions of story-telling.

advocate for the strength of the culture and Dreaming of today:

As colonisation and the industries it brought have literally

‘It’s not like the way it all used to be now; it’s even changed in

reconfigured the earth over the course of some 200 years, many

the short years of my life. But it is all still here, just now it is all

of the early creation stories have come to incorporate post-

over the place.’

colonial subject matter – adaptations necessary for their own survival. This exhibition presents examples of this phenomenon

Through the painting of quirky incidences they’ve borne witness

locally – celebrating the relevance of these evolving cultural

to over the years, Judith Yinyika Chambers, Polly Pawuya

narratives that are unparalleled in their spanning of time.

Butler-Jackson and Eunice Yunurupa Porter (Warakurna Kate Alida Mullen, Curator

WARINGARRI ABORIGINAL ARTS, KUNUNURRA WARMUN ART CENTRE, WARMUN

SPINIFEX HILL ARTISTS, PORT HEDLAND YINJAABARNI ART, ROEBOURNE

MARTUMILI ARTISTS, NEWMAN

JIGALONG COMMUNITY

WARAKURNA ARTISTS, WARAKURNA

YAMAJI ART, GERALDTON

PERTH

Dream mine time animals Contemporary mechanical dream mine time animals Creating sacred sites for the future Is what our kids will proudly tell Their stories around the campfires Of the mechanical snakes slithering across land Creating new traditional pathways and song lines Transporting hills and country to the coast Filling the belly of monstrous steel fish Vomiting our precious earth onto foreign shores Contemporary mechanical mine dream time animals Hills broken into millions of pieces Deep cuts into the flesh of earth Gaping wounds with polluted waterholes Haulpak mechanical dream mine time animals Moving defenceless country from country The remnants of sacred sites given up for money Man-made hills our children will claim as belonging To country, tradition and culture False hills they will weave into song lines And cultural boundary markers Dream mine time animals destroyer of land Charmaine Papertalk-Green, 2017

Production still from the making of Charmaine Greenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Dream Mine Time Animals, stop motion animation with iron ore dust, 2018, Gunnado Farm, Geraldton. Image courtesy of the artist.

IN CONVERSATION CHARMAINE GREEN & KATE ALIDA MULLEN May, 2018 | Geraldton

Kate Alida Mullen: Could we start by getting a sense of how, for you, the Dreamtime, or the Dreaming – in everything that that means – is present and impactful in your day-to-day life in Geraldton? Charmain Green: Well, the Dreaming is actually a white anthropologist’s concept. They’re who developed ‘the Dreaming’ and ‘the Dreamtime’. It’s a different understanding, the way [my people] look at the Dreaming. I think [my people] prefer [the term] ‘Dreaming’, but we don’t really use that term in this part of [the country]. Well, I haven’t grown up using that term. It’s [referred to] more as when the earth was soft and the land was formed and the laws were given and the stories were laid down for people in their behavior and how to behave in society. So, that’s what happened back a long time ago, a time when we say the earth was soft. The ‘Dream’ and ‘Dreamtime’ makes people think that it’s not actually real, whereas to us this whole concept of how our ancestors lived and how our world was formed, is real. But it happened at a time when the earth was soft. KAM: And, for you, when the earth was soft and those stories that have been passed down are literal, they’re factual? CG: They’re not myths. And the term ‘Dream’ kind of brings a different understanding to people; they’ll relate it to myths that have happened in different cultures. So, they’ll think it’s not real, more a part of an unreal storytelling. That’s other peoples’ understanding, I think, but we don’t use that concept as much here. KAM: So, this oral history that’s been passed down, elaborated into stories that teach people how to behave - I guess they’re lessons, or codes of conduct that are embedded in those ancient stories - do you feel like those are as relevant to society today? A society upon that same soil as millennia’s past?

CG: There are things that our Aboriginal ancestors have passed down to us in regards to respecting Country and how Country is really alive and talks to us and we need to respect that and respect it in that concept. But we don’t spend a lot of time now trying to drag through [that knowledge of respect] – everyone thinks that the real Aboriginal is back in tradition times, or has to have this really romantic connection to, you know, back then. But [my mob], today, concentrate on now and the harshness of what’s happened with colonisation.

in these two worlds and trying to survive and trying to make sense of how we fit or where we fit. Or, how do the other people fit, actually, the people who are visitors here. KAM: And we’ve just spent three-days out on Yamaji Country, out at Gunnado Farm realising one of your poems (‘Dream Mine Time Animals’) into sand animation, which we’ll talk about in a minute. But in the space of those three-days, I feel your Country was very much a part of that process. It was holding us and speaking with us constantly. You talk about your spiritual connection to that Country, but how does that spiritual connection with Country show up in a literal way, day to day, for you? I guess it’s a consciousness. Is it a constant conversation, of sorts?

I think a lot of my storytelling and my story is that, despite what’s happened with colonisation and despite assimilation and all those sorts of things, we’ve survived. You’ve got someone like me sitting at a table, having coffee, but still writing poems about how important Country is. And this is the reality, and that respect and love for Country does come from somewhere way back then, and [was] handed down by my parents.

CG: It’s really hard to explain when it’s really connected to your reality and you’ve got all these other noises, such as town life, and having to live within a framework that’s now placed on this land. But you’re always reminded of how your old people lived and the connections they had to that Country and what you can do, and that you’re actually part of that.

It’s also a spiritual thing. Everybody’s lives get really busy and there’s some things that you concentrate on to survive, but I’m always - and don’t ask me where it comes from - I always don’t forget this: It doesn’t matter where you sit in the world, you have to respect the Country because that’s where we come from. The land.

That poem that we did in animation, for instance, is about trying to prick peoples’ conscience – a lot of Aboriginal people as well – that our storytelling’s going to change in the generations that are in front of us because of what the resource industry does, changing the landscape, because that Country is so connected to culture. So that transformation is also going to transform the storytelling and the way people tell stories. False hills are going to be not seen as false hills; they’re going to be something that’s always been on the landscape from when a person was born. So, they don’t know anything else. It’s important that families do tell people what was there before, and what was taken away.

KAM: And would you say that’s been lost, to an extent? CG: We don’t really say ‘lost’, we say people are busy, sleeping. Now, when I talk, I’m only talking about my particular Country. I’m not talking in the context of anywhere else because I don’t have a right to do that. I think people are busy with survival and colonisation’s had a really bad impact, a really hurtful impact in this part of the world, like other parts of Australia, where people are now struggling

It [this poem] is a reminder. And it is trying to get people to look at it in a different way and the impact that’ll happen, the impact on their generation, their future descendants, their kids and our grandkids in front of us, you know, what legacy does that leave for them?

lot of people want to separate us, to think that the way we are now is that we’re assimilated enough to not really need to care about what happened back then – it’s a different life, a different world – but it’s not. There’s these things that grow inside people and are carried with you that your ancestors won’t let you forget. And, either way, they just won’t let you forget, and that comes to you in different ways. For me, it comes to me in poetry.

KAM: And it [this poem] is also a testament to how resilient your culture is in that it talks about the capacity to transform, adapting old, old stories, old material, that’ve been handed down for 60,000 plus years, in order to survive. So those stories can change and transform. In a sense, that same connection can remain, although may just look different.

KAM: It’s in you, it’s part of you. CG: It’s very hard to describe. Yeah, it’s part of you. It’s part of your whole being and it’s part of your way of knowing and it’s part of your world view. Some people, because colonisers have supressed people so much, they’re more reluctant to bring that forward and would rather just survive. But we’re very resilient people. Even in towns like Geraldton where there’s a lot of concrete, lot of buildings, I always remind people that under those concrete and buildings are the energy of our old people who’ve walked this land and it’s still there and we should be very privileged to be in this space.

CG: Yeah. It’s really interesting when I’m just looking at this poem a little more closely and analyzing. When someone reads that, sometimes they read ‘Dreamtime’, but it’s not ‘Dreamtime’, it’s ‘Dream Mine Time’, so it’s what’s happening during ‘Mine Time’. When they’re making the earth in to a kind of a different sort of softness, which isn’t really good. If you look at Uranium extraction, and even with the iron ore, so this is kind of getting people to look at it. And this is all people, this message around the impact it’s going to have on our culture is for everyone to have a look at and get people to think about it in this way that we look at our large ancestors that were around when the earth was soft. And now the resource industry have these other large (Creation Beings) – I’m not even up to half the size of a tyre in one of those haul packs, they’re huge! That’s where this idea in my head comes from: they’re making the earth soft [again] in a bad way, and using these giant mechanical animals, or machines.

I also remind people that when the settlers came to this part of Australia, the Aboriginal people showed them the waterholes and gave them water to drink, so that’s where they put their wells. The Aboriginal people had well-defined walking tracks, so that’s where they put their roads and covered a lot of things up. Our people were really important in opening up land for another culture that disrespected those ones who first helped them. It’s really quite tragic. It’s so sad.

Really where I’m coming from is that I’ve carried forward to this reality now, where we’re sitting and in this context. I’ve brought that forward, that belongs to this – it’s travelled over generations with me to where we’re sitting now. It’s not something that I have to reach back for, it’s come with us. And I think that’s the most important thing, ‘cause a

And, you know, Bruce Pascoe’s book Dark Emu really puts that in a context for others to see. Like, when they ran out of vegetables here and the ship from Fremantle didn’t get up in time they traded yams with Aboriginal people. Those stories aren’t told, [stories about] the importance of land. 14

KAM: Speaking of books, this book, False Claims of Colonial Theives (in which ‘Dream Mine Time Animals’ is published), a collaboration between Charmaine Papertalk-Green, your writing name… CG: Papertalk is my Mum’s maiden name. KAM: So fitting. And John Kinsella, who wrote this book with you. This is your second series of poems published? CG: Well over the years, because I’m just busy with a whole lot of things – it’s kind of like a tap, where I drip, drip poems. And every now and then you might get a glass out of me. So, I’ve had two sets of poems [published], but the taps been dripping since I was seventeen, like going into anthologies and online into different things. I have written a children’s verse novel a few years back and I think I’ll be writing more now as I’m older and my sons have left home. So, I will have that luxury of time to reflect and to write. I think this latter part of my life will be exciting; it will get the stories out. KAM: I don’t think you’ll be slowing down. Just channeling your energies differently, maybe.

Charmaine Green & Jesse Pickett, Dream Mine Time Animals (video still), 2018, stop motion animation with iron ore dust. Image courtesy of the artist and Steven Aiton.

CG: Yeah, more into writing and more in to getting more stories through – I kind of like poetry because I like the messages you can get across in poetry, rather than writing a full-on story or a novel, poetry just comes to me.

Production still with the Yamaji Art team from the making of Charmaine Green’s Dream Mine Time Animals, stop motion animation with iron ore dust, 2018, Gunnado Farm, Geraldton. Image courtesy of the artist.

Gabriel Nodea, Warrarnany Prediction - through the eyes of the wedge tail eagle, 2018, natural ochre and pigments on canvas, 120 x 90 cm. Photograph by Bewley Shaylor.

Nancy Nodea, New Camp (Texas), 2018, natural ochre and pigment on canvas, 50 x 50 cm. Photograph by Bewley Shaylor.

Phyllis Thomas, Learning How to Work (diptych), 2018, natural pigment and ochre on canvas, 50 x 50 cm (each panel). Photograph by Bewley Shaylor.

Curtis Taylor May, 2018 | Perth

‘With these tongues, the idea came about [out of] wanting to know who my biological Grandfather is. His story. Most of these songs - practiced for entertainment, for coming around and sitting near the fire, telling story - were composed by him, and other people in his family. He [my Grandfather] has a dark history. He was exiled [from my community] and died before I was born. Nobody don’t really talk about him. I don’t really know his real name because a lot of my family don’t say his name. But we all know who they’re talking about. The idea was to get to know the person more, and the only way [I had access to him] was through these songs and thinking about tongues. They [the songs] came out from his tongue, from his dreams to his tongue. I think it’s really important that a lot of other people are still maintaining it, even though it’s not their song, but maintaining his legacy and

his identity to that part of the Country through these songs. And I really wanted to listen and transcribe those songs, because [as Martu is traditionally an oral language] this is my attempt to write them down, the way I’m hearing it. In making these I’m revisiting [him] every time I’m working on them. Trying to find my place in all of this, whether it be in [the] family line, or in these stories. And people said: ‘Now it’s time for you; you’re writing these songs, you should be able to sing them.’ But I don’t feel like I’m there. I feel like, now, it doesn’t feel right for me to do that. And I don’t know why. I’ll figure that out whenever I come to that point. It was really important to go back out to Country and get the wood [for the sculptures] from that area, from where he was from. And the songs, where they lay in that Country. And, too, as I was working on this I was thinking about [how] back in those days a lot of the old people were really strong. People are still [strong] today but the generation today, like my generation, there are composers of songs but not of songs when they [come to you through] connection to places [and] they get or receive [the songs] from sitting on the river or climbing on a rock. Those kinds of experiences, when they get it from the subconscious state.

Curtis Taylor at his home studio in Perth with his series of wood carved sculptures, Nyunyjila â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Tongues, in development for DREAM MINE TIME, 2018. Image courtesy of Kate Alida Mullen.

I guess what I’m trying to question is [whether] there is going to be individuals that are [still] composing or bringing up new songs or reviving culture from their experience, their spiritual experience that they have out in Country? At least in my parents’ generation or my generation, there hasn’t really been [anybody who channels songs in this way] but maybe there will be, I’m sure there will be, but what it takes to have that [ability, or receptivity, known as ‘visitations’] I don’t know.

And that’s the danger. I’m really conscious that [this old way of dreaming songs through Country] is becoming more rare. That it’s not happening more often, but maybe that’s how it was, I don’t know. Maybe every fifty or seventy or onehundred years people got that kind of experience, I don’t know. But there’s definitely a threat and I think the biggest threat is time, you know, and people not listening fully. I mean, they’re listening but they’re not taking everything in.’ Curtis Taylor

The living memories that we have are like these libraries that are still alive, and I’m talking about the old people that still have these, and still tell us about it, and the meaning behind it, and can really break it down to what the words and, in this case, the lyrics mean. For a lot of people that has been lost because a whole lot has happened to their people [since colonisation]. Some young people that go there [out on Country], men or women, have these experiences, and re-learn, channel [the old knowledge] back through. They [may] get it fully, or maybe it’s a little bit distorted but it’s still something, I guess.

Curtis Taylor, Nyunyjila Tongues, 2018, carved wood sourced from the artist’s Country, iron ore dust, ochre and paint, dimensions variable. Photograph by Bewley Shaylor.

THE DREAMING OF ARTISTS, ARTISTS OF THE DREAMING

Juli began painting by watching Rover Thomas, who famously turned dreams into Dreaming at present day Warmun. In the 1970s, Thomas lay in a fever, receiving a vision of songs about the Country that extended far to the south. With this dream Thomas, who was from the deserts, became a part of the local freshwater Country, as he persuaded his classificatory uncle Paddy Jimanji to make dancing boards for his song-cycle. The dream of the Kuirr-Kuirr cycle was both new and old,

Across Turkey Creek from the Kimberley community of

manifesting from the ancient realm of the unseen, from the

Warmun is the range where the crow and eagle fought,

everywhen of space-time. Its songs were always lodged in this

where these Dreaming beings lay down into the Country.

esoteric realm, unravelling from sites on the Country in dreams and dance. Such songs pass from singer to singer, from mob to

It is possible to see this place where the great birds are

mob, and from generation to generation. In this exhibition Curtis

embedded into stone even in the twenty-first century, and

Taylor is passing his grandfatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s songs from tongue into wood,

to conceive of these Ngarranggarniny beings as alive in the

preserving them before they are forgotten once more.

present. Artists from remote Australia have long attempted to make visible this invisible realm, to lay out its energies and

Like his grandfather, Taylor is a kind of mystic, seeking out

shapes with acrylic paint, ochre and wood.

buried knowledge, hidden songs and dreams that await their awakening. At a public talk in 2013, Taylor was asked about

Mabel Juli works almost every day at the Warmun Art

extra-sensory perception among Aboriginal people. In answer,

Centre, a prolific imager of Dreamings of land and stars.

he explained the Martu concept of kapukurri, in which people

She folds landscape and sky into enigmatic figures that

meet each other in dreams. One has to come back before the

no longer resemble landscape at all, but become the

sun rises, Taylor said, or oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s body will die. Such truths are not

shapes of dreams and Dreamings. Through her paintings

only from the past but are lived by the dreamers of today, for

it is possible to unlock the mysteries of perception that lie

remote people who are still haunted by Dreaming beings, and

within the country, and within which Dreaming beings lurk.

by a Country that is shaped by them.

In the days of Taylorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s grandfather, and in the living memory of

Many other works on show in DREAM TIME MINE overlay

many of the older artists in this show, song-cycles were a daily

this life of the present time with deep time, the dreaming of

event. They were performed every night at the Jigalong Mission,

mining companies with the Dreaming of ancient laws. Just as

as many as 70 or 80 performances over a three-week period,

Kumpupirntily is thick with politics, so in the Kimberley old

with hundreds of songs. Cattle stations, government settlements

cattle stations are overlaid with Ngarranggarni stories, while

and prisons were alive with song and dance, passing from the

lighthouses stand atop ancient shores to the south. History

Dreaming to dreamers, dancers and singers, and across the

is not only paired with Dreaming knowledge, but determines

country between languages and families.

its shape. Artists navigate these boundaries between ancient and contemporary, carving and painting the edges of these

The performance and revelation of Dreamings remain central

shores, revealing what was hidden and breathing life into

to the politics of remote communities, as the Dreaming haunts

that which could otherwise be forgotten. In this hiding

the responsibilities of the present. In the 1970s, Thomas needed

and revealing, the artists of DREAM TIME MINE are like the

to persuade Jimanji that his visions were true. Today, Taylor is

songmen of old, as they bring Dreaming forms into view

asking his family about his controversial grandfather, who was

before folding them back into the Country, disturbing the

exiled from Jigalong for reasons this young artist does not yet

surface of the world before allowing it to resume its place.

understand. The Dreaming is not only mystical, but political and potentially fraught.

Dr. Darren Jorgensen, Lecturer in art history at the University of Western Australia.

Such politics have especially come to the fore since Native Title, when companies and governments use their â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;secret Englishâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; to change the Country itself. Yunkurra Billy Atkins paints Kumpupirntily (Lake Disappointment) to protest plans to build a mine there. Kumpupirntily is one of a handful of places where water flows into the country rather than to the sea. It is a kind of soul for the continent itself, and harbours cannibal beings beneath its surface. Yunkurra warns against even walking on this salt lake, the power of these Dreaming beings are so great. Mabel Juli, Darrajayin Station, 2018, natural ochre and pigment on canvas, 50 x 50 cm. Photograph by Bewley Shaylor.

Mabel Juli, Darrajayin Station, 2018, natural ochre and pigment on canvas, 50 x 50 cm. Photograph by Bewley Shaylor.

Clifton Mack, Rainbow Serpent, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 59 x 89 cm. Photograph by Bewley Shaylor Clifton Mack, Jarman Island (Lighthouse), 2017, acrylic and texture on canvas, 140 x 91 cm. Photograph by Bewley Shaylor Victor Burton, Willarra (moon), 2017, acrylic on canvas, 71 x 71 cm. Image courtesy of Spinifex Hill Artists.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES

CHARMAINE GREEN is from the Wajarri, Badimaya and Southern Yamaji peoples of Western Australia. She has lived and worked in rural Western Australia (Pilbara and the Midwest) for nearly four decades as an artist and poet, community development practitioner and social sciences researcher. Green’s practice spans painting, drawing and collage, often incorporating text. More recently, she has explored installation as part of Yamaji Arts Aboriginal astronomy art projects Shared Sky and Ilgarijiri (Things belonging to the Sky). Green has been published broadly as a poet under the name Green Papertalk-Green, including two collections of poems: Just Like That (2007) and False Claims of Colonial Thieves (2018) with fellow poet John Kinsella. Green is based in Geraldton, Western Austraila. MABEL JULI was born at Five Mile, near Moola Boola Station (south of Warmun), and was taken as a baby to Springvale Station, her Mother’s Country. Juli, whose bush name is Wiringgoon, is one of the most dedicated and iconic of all Warmun artists. Her seniority and status as one of Australia’s most revered painters has emerged from a consistent and growing body of work since she first began painting in the 1980s. Her paintings are characterised by bold yet simple compositions informed by nuanced and detailed stories passed onto Juli from her family. She is a strong Law and Culture woman and an important ceremonial singer and dancer. Her work has been acquired by major national and international collections. NANCY NODEA grew up and worked most of her early life on Texas Downs Cattle station in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia. Nodea began painting in 1994, guided by Rover Thomas and Queenie McKenzie. Nodea has explored contemporary stories that occurred in the East Kimberley over the past 200 years since white settlement. She has told the stories of the white cameleers and massacre sites not far from Warmun in her paintings; she is one of the strongest historical painters at Warmun but also paints her beloved Texas Downs Station Country. Nodea and other artists who grew up on this station take an active role in taking young people out to Country to hunt, fish and return to traditional ways of living with the land.

PHYLLIS THOMAS is a Gija woman of Nagarra skin whose ‘bush name’, Booljoonngali, means ‘big rain coming down with lots of wind’. She was born at a place called Riya on the Turner River, south east of the Bungle-Bungles. When Thomas was young she worked on Turner Station looking after poultry, gardening, grinding salt and carrying water from the well but often preferred to run away into the bush with the old women. She loved walking all over the Country with her grandmother and the other old women. She began painting when Freddie Timms set up the Jirrawun Aboriginal Arts group at Crocodile Hole. Thomas’ work has been acquired by a number of collectors and galleries including a special focus purchase of five paintings by the Art Gallery of Western Australia in 2000. BEN WARD was born at Argyle Downs Station at Ward Creek in 1951, which became his namesake. Ward’s father was a half-Miriwoong, half-Afghan man who worked as a stockman on the station and, in those days, was unable to claim Ward as his own. After Ward left school he worked as a mechanic and it was the shop owner’s wife who taught him how to paint in watercolour. It wasn’t until 2011 that Ward began carving and painting in natural ochres and pigments on a regular basis at Waringarri Aboriginal Arts in Kununurra. His painting practice focuses on depicting his Country and memories of when he was a young man mustering cattle, from his own unique perspective. In 2015 he was the first Indigenous person to win the prestigious John Fries Award for emerging artists.

CLIFTON MACK is an elder of the Yindjibarndi people and son of revered Yindjibarndi Rainmaker, Long Mack, who carried the knowledge of water for his people. Mack started painting in 2001 while participating in a tertiary education course at Cossack. Mack’s art represents his Pilbara Country and its stories, the rocks of the Pilbara Region and the flora and fauna. Mack is always experimenting with colour, often layering colours and patterns over each other and at times achieves this optical effect by painting one story on top of another. In 2010 and 2014, Mack was a finalist in the prestigious Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in Darwin. His work has won numerous awards and is represented in collections nationally and internationally. BILLY YUNKURRA ATKINS was born at Weld Springs, also known as Well 9 on the Canning Stock Route. He grew up with elderly people, learning about Country in the traditional way, and now lives in Jigalong. Yunkurra has been painting for longer than most Martu artists and has worked as an independent artist since the early 2000’s, painting and carving. His work was selected for the 2003 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award and he has held solo exhibitions locally and interstate. The National Gallery of Australia has purchased his work and in 2005 he participated in an artists’ exchange program through the Wilin Centre at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne. His recent collaborative animation, Cannibal Story, has also screened in a number of major film festivals and screen events around the globe. Last year, Yunkurra’s entry in the 2017 Hedland Art Awards was awarded the prize of Most Outstanding Artwork.

CURTIS TAYLOR is a Martu filmmaker and artist based in Perth. Growing up in the remote Martu desert communities and going to school in the city, Taylor gained both traditional Martu knowledge and a Western education. He has worked on a number of film and multi-media productions, including Lynette Wallworth’s Emmy Award-winning Collisions. He was a community Coordinator and Youth Development Officer at Martu Media (a division of Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa), where he also spent 18 months working on Yiwarra Kuju: The Canning Stock Route as a filmmaker and youth ambassador. Taylor was the recipient of the 2011 Western Australian Youth Art Award and Wesfarmers Youth Scholarship and his screen works have been shown in international film festivals, including the 2012 Nepal International Indigenous Film Archive Festival. Taylor’s exhibitions include In Cahoots, Fremantle Arts Centre (2017), Networking The Unseen, Furtherfield Gallery, London (2016), Dead Ringer, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (2015), Taboo, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2012) and We don’t need a map: a Martu experience of the Western Desert, Fremantle Arts Centre (2012). GABRIEL NODEA was born in 1969 at the Derby Leprosarium hospital. He says his early life was complicated because he moved around to different places throughout the Kimberley. Nodea attended Ngalangangpum Community school in Warmun and then went to high school in Broome. He was the first student from Warmun to complete year ten. Nodea has worked for a long time in the Warmun community office and began painting in 2004. Nodea is a strong dancer, artist and an important holder of Gija culture and language. He has performed dances in Paris and Canada and, in 2010, led performers invited to the Art Gallery of NSW to perform at events associated with the launch of Art + Soul. In 2010 Nodea completed both Certificate I and II in Indigenous Leadership and was selected to complete the Wesfarmers Indigenous Leadership Course at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. He now continues to play an important role in guiding the direction of the Warmun Art Centre and advises on cultural matters.

JUDITH YINYIKA CHAMBERS was born at Mitjika, a rockhole North of the Great Central Road near Wanarn community and today lives in Warakurna with her family. Chambers attended school at Warburton Mission with her sisters and completed senior schooling at Pink Lake High School in Esperance. Chambers’s family were among the first people to move back to Warakurna in the mid 1970’s when the settlement was established. Chambers has been involved with Warakurna Artists since 2006. She is a talented artist creating painting, grass and fibre basket and sculpture with Tjanpi Desert Weavers and punu for Maruku Arts. POLLY PAWUYA BUTLER-JACKSON was born at a soak called Yulpigari, close to Pangkupirri (Bunglebiddy) rockhole. As a child she travelled on foot with her family around the Tjukurla, Warakurna, Kurlail and Docker River area. Butler-Jackson attended Warburton Mission School as a young girl and lived in the mission camp with her family. Butler-Jackson was a successful student and completed her secondary education at Pink Lake High School in Esperance. Upon completing high school Butler-Jackson went back to Warburton to live. Butler-Jackson has been painting with Warakurna Artists since 2006 and works with Tjanpi Desert Weavers creating baskets and grass sculpture and with Maruku Arts crafting punu artefacts. EUNICE YUNURUPA PORTER was born at Wirrkural near Lupul on the Jameson road out of Warburton Mission and now lives in Warakurna with her husband’s family. As a young child she and her family walked the Country that is recognised today as the communities of Mantamaru, Papulankutja and Irruntju. Porter painted a limited amount of works for the Warburton Arts project in the early 1990s and began painting with Warakurna Artists in 2005. She has rapidly become one of its most exciting emerging artists with her vibrant interpretations of powerful Tjukurrpa and

contemporary stories. Porter is a diversely talented artist, creating woven grass sculpture with Tjanpi Desert Weavers and crafting punu (native wood) artefacts for Maruku Arts. She is also a well-known dancer and regularly participated in Tjulku (ceremony). In 2000 she danced as part of the NPY presentation at the Olympic Games opening in Sydney and was one of the principle dancers for the Ngaanyatjarra Tjurlku at the Perth International Arts Festival. VICTOR BURTON was born at a creek far south of Well 33 on the Canning Stock Route. He spent his youth walking his desert Country, as far east as Uluru, and back to Jigalong, where he thereafter was largely based for the remainder of his upbringing. Today painting with Spinifex Hill Studio in Port Hedland, Burton paints Creation Beings that portray his Country as a living, breathing entity. He exhibited as part of Revealed 2017 at Fremantle Art Centre and a painting of one of his iconic warrior faces was selected to promote the overall exhibition. NYAPURU (WILLIAM) GARDINER is an artist, storyteller and language worker. For several years he recorded and wrote Nyangumarta language and stories. Nyapuru paints about his childhood in the 1940s before the Pilbara Aboriginal strike of 1946, and his work on pastoral stations throughout the Pilbara and the Kimberley. Nyapuru has now returned to live in Port Hedland, his childhood home, and has won an impressive number of art awards and exhibits nationally, including

Acknowledgements Published by Kate Alida Mullen and FORM, 2018 Designed by Ryan Stephenson Printed by Scott Print ÂŠ 2018. All rights reserved. Copyright for photographic images is held by the individual photographer. Copyright for written content and this publication is held by FORM or the individual writer. Copyright for the artwork resides with the artists. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form with prior permission from the publisher. Curated by Kate Alida Mullen kate.alida.mullen@gmail.com Exhibited at: FORM Gallery 357 Murray Street, Perth 8 June - 28 July 2018

SPECIAL THANKS TO: FORM building a state of creativity Inc. Government of Western Australia: Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries Geraldton Streetwork Aboriginal Corporation Magabala Books Martumili Artists Mossenson Galleries Spinifex Hill Artists Warakurna Artists Waringarri Aboriginal Arts Warmun Art Centre Yamaji Art Yinjaa-Barni Art

Billy Yunkurrra Atkins, Kumpupirntily (Lake Disappointment), 2014, gouache on arches paper, 102 x 154 cm. Image courtesy of Martumili Artists.

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