REPRESENT - Aboriginal Figurative Practice in Western Australia [Part 1]

PART 1

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REPRESENT: ABORIGINAL FIGURATIVE PRACTICE IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA (PART 1)

Cover: Rhona Wallam, Sunset on Country (detail), 2023, acrylic paint and acrylic paint pen on canvas, 76.5 x 101.5 cm

FORM acknowledges the Traditional Owners and Custodians throughout Western Australia both past and present, whose enduring connection to this Country and ongoing contributions to our collective culture and communities we respect and honour. We appreciate and are deeply grateful for the privilege of working on these lands.

WARNING: We advise that this exhibition contains the names and artworks of deceased First Nations peoples.

Their families and representatives have provided permission for this, in recognition of their significance to Western Australian artistic expression.

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ABORIGINAL FIGURATIVE PRACTICE IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA

REPRESENT: ABORIGINAL FIGURATIVE PRACTICE IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA (PART 1)

REPRESENT

“There’s more power in representing yourself, than being represented by others.”

Sharyn Egan, REPRESENT Cultural Consultant

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Mr. Atkins Gordon Barunga Mrs. Benson Mrs. Bolton Mrs. Chambers Mrs. Donnovan Julie Dowling Wurta Amy French Mr. Gardiner Philip Hansen Sandra Hill Noreena Kadibil Elaine Lane Jatarr Lily Long Kallum Mungulu Mr. Mack Mrs. McLean Laurel Nannup Eunice Yunurupa Porter Helen Dale Samson Leah Umbagai Rhona Wallam 4

Mrs. Winsley

FORM Gallery is delighted to present REPRESENT, a survey of Western Australian figurative expression by Aboriginal artists, presented across two exhibitions. We are honoured to be collaborating with Whadjuk Noongar Elder Sharyn Egan in the role of cultural consultant over this project, an artist whose own sculptural practice engages with figurative representation. The project has been curated to celebrate a highly significant genre of contemporary art that does not always enjoy the same level of critical attention as semi-abstract and designbased First Nations works.

REPRESENT (Part 1) comprises works by senior and deceased artists who helped pave the way for figurative expression in Western Australia, highlighting the legacies of the State’s major representational Aboriginal art movements.

REPRESENT (Part 2) shows at FORM Gallery from MarchMay 2024, featuring works by contemporary Western Australian artists who are taking figurative practice in new directions today. The exhibition will include artists from Cheeditha Art Group, Martumili Artists, Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency, Spinifex Hill Studio, Tjanpi Desert Weavers, Warakurna Artists and Yinjaa-Barni Art, alongside independent Noongar artists.

REPRESENT: ABORIGINAL FIGURATIVE PRACTICE IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA (PART 1)

For millions of people around the world, abstract dot painting is synonymous with Aboriginal Art, yet First Nations creative expression is as diverse as the individuals who make it. In Western Australia figurative/representational work has been practised

by Aboriginal people for centuries, as evidenced by rock art and petroglyphs created tens of thousands of years ago. In recent decades representational art has enabled Aboriginal people to express themselves and tell stories in a powerfully direct way, resulting in some of the most iconic legacies in Western Australian art, including the Carrolup School of the State’s south, the highly innovative sculptural practice of the Tjanpi Desert Weavers, and the deeply spiritual Wandjina figures of the Kimberley.

Though REPRESENT is by no means an exhaustive survey, we are honoured to be featuring works by some of the giants of Western Australian art over the past four decades, especially at a time when respectful communication, open dialogue and truth telling are so crucial to our nation’s identity.

We advise that this exhibition contains the names and artworks of deceased First Nations peoples. Their families and representatives have provided permission for this, in recognition of their significance to Western Australian artistic expression.

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The Noongar Landscape Tradition Philip Hansen and Rhona Wallam Philip Hansen was born on 19 September 1950 at Katanning District Hospital, to parents Felix Hanson and Marjorie Wallam who were married at Carrolup Mission Settlement. He has five brothers and five sisters. His parents moved to a place called Allawah Grove, south of Guilford Aboriginal Settlement when he was about twelve years of age. That is where he first picked up a paintbrush.

A few other children and himself used to follow the old women into the swamps where they used to collect bark and paint on it around campfires. This is where he did his first paintings which were not very good, that is when he stated to paint on three ply and mason boards with school paints. From there he moved on to canvas with acrylic paints.

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“With mum and dad we moved around and lived a lot in the bush.

There were eight [of us] – six girls and two boys... Mum and dad couldn’t read or write and made sure we went to school. We moved around a lot because he couldn’t get a permanent job, since he couldn’t read… so he did a lot of work on the farms and a lot of my pictures remind me of that.

I loved it [painting] in school, like late primary and highschool. When we finished school, my dad was very strict ‘if you’re not working or going to school…’ you know!? [laughs] …

I went to business college and got a job… met my husband there and the rest is history.

“I like to do paintings of bush and water scenes and my greatest inspiration was from Albert Namatjira, Reynold Hart, Malcome Ellis, Parnel Dempster, Barry Loo, Bella Kelly (Nundle), and most of all my Mother who said ‘When you start something always finish it’. She gave me strength when I gave up many times.”

We lived in Kunnunarra for 5 years and the country up there is unbelievable… but it wasn’t home.

Bunbury’s always been home, there’s beautiful spots all over our Country. I love the colours of the sunset, it is a natural space without boundaries. It is the freedom of being on Country.”

Biography provided by Philip Hansen

Rhona Wallam, 2023

Noongar art has been dominated by figurative practice historically, with depictions of Country especially central to the Noongar painting tradition. Of particular note are the extraordinary works created by the many Aboriginal children living at the Carrolup River Native Settlement (later known as the Marribank Mission) during the 1940s, which are instantly synonymous with both the breathtakingly beautiful landscapes of Western Australia’s southern regions, and the trauma and government-sanctioned systemic racism faced by the State’s Aboriginal people since colonisation; forcibly removed from their families and placed in the Carrolup Settlement, the ‘inmates’ (as they were called) suffered unimaginable trauma and indignity in prison-like conditions, yet were able to express their connection to Country through their internationallycelebrated landscapes. Their legacy has influenced subsequent generations, with many of the most acclaimed Noongar artists of recent decades paying homage to their work.

Though iconic, Carrolup is only part of the story of Noongar landscape painting however. Great Southern-based Bella Kelly (1915-1994) for example developed her style, which shares many of the aesthetic trademarks of the Carrolup artists, prior to and independent of them, and may well have influenced them, as some of her own children were later taken to the Mission. Contemporary artists such as Tjyllyungoo (Lance Chadd) and Christopher Pease have continued to expand the Noongar landscape tradition in recent decades to express sacred, colonial and political narratives.

FORM is delighted to showcase South West-based painters Philip Hansen and Rhona Wallam in REPRESENT. Like the many artists who came before them, they depict the landforms, flora and fauna of the South West with intense scrutiny and respect, and continue the rich tradition of celebrating the idyllic beauty of Noongar Country.

REPRESENT: ABORIGINAL FIGURATIVE PRACTICE IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA (PART 1)

Philip Hansen Peace at Sunset, 2023 Acrylic on board 33.5 x 94 cm EXREP-0023 $1960

Rhona Wallam Sunset on Country, 2023 Acrylic paint and acrylic paint pen on canvas 76.5 x 101.5 cm EXREP-0024 $2120

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Laurel Nannup Laurel Nannup is a senior Noongar artist and a member of the Stolen Generations who is recognised as one of Western Australia’s leading printmakers of the early 21st Century. By turns endearing and profoundly sad, her prints present moving depictions of her memories as a member of the Stolen Generations, and other childhood experiences of belonging and exclusion. She is represented in important collections including The Art Gallery of Western Australia, the Berndt Museum of Anthropology, the Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Art in the Netherlands, The National Gallery of Australia, and Queensland Art Gallery.

Nannup was born at the Carrolup River Native Settlement in 1943 and grew up with her large family in the bush around Pinjarra, until the age of eight when she was taken to Wandering Mission where she lived

until the age of sixteen. Her contribution to REPRESENT includes two of her most moving works, depictions of the ‘last bath’ she took prior to being taken to the Mission, and the ‘big black car’ car that arrived shortly afterwards to remove her from her family.

Already a nationally-respected printmaker, toward the end of her artistic career Nannup again forged new creative ground via her iconic sculpture First Contact (2015), the first public sculpture by a Noongar artist to be installed in the Perth CBD. The work was inspired by the Noongar peoples’ first encounters with European invaders, whose distant ships appeared to them as giant birds on the horizon. FORM was honoured to support Nannup in the development and creation of this work in partnership with Urban Art Projects, and we are thrilled to include one of the maquettes for the work in REPRESENT.

Laurel Nannup First Contact maquette (Edition 5/6 & 6/6 available), 2015 Cast aluminium 50 x 50 x 17 cm EXREP-0005 PRICE ON APPLICATION

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REPRESENT: ABORIGINAL FIGURATIVE PRACTICE IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA (PART 1) Laurel Nannup Big Black Car, 2015 Woodcut 84 x 82 cm EXREP-0004 $4520

Laurel Nannup Last Bath (Edition 3/5), 2015 Linocut 71 x 73.5 cm EXREP-0003 $3520 9

Noongar Dolls Mavis Bolton (1927-tbc), Laurel Nannup and Joyce Winsley (1938-2001) Doll-making from found and recycled materials was a common practice for Noongar women and children during the reserve and mission days, when toys had to be fashioned from whatever could be found. In recent decades this legacy has been re-embraced and celebrated by new generations of Noongar women.

In 1993, the Narrogin Aboriginal Corporation hosted a creative workshop as part of a Community Development Employment Program. Artists in residence, non-Indigenous fibre sculptor Nalda Searles and Ngaanjatjarra artist Mrs. P.M. McLean taught a range of craft techniques to a group of local women who had expressed an interest in doll making, and a number of highly imaginative small fabric sculptures emerged.

Created utilising recycled clothing, the first dolls were made by Jean Riley and Mrs. E. Riley (1951-2019). Five years later Mrs. Riley’s elder sister Mrs. M. Bolton also took up the craft, and

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at the same time their sister Mrs. J. Winsley was becoming acclaimed for her intricately-stitched figures created from Guildford Grass. For all of the women, dollmaking allowed them to tell their own stories and depict significant figures from their younger lives who had remained in their memories.

As Searles noted in 2003, Narrogin, which had a small (non-Indigenous) family-run dollmaking factory in the 1920s had become another centre for doll production seventy years later. FORM was honoured to showcase the Narrogin dollmakers in the major touring exhibition Seven Sisters – Fibre Works Arising from the West (2004).

Noongar dollmaking continued throughout subsequent decades, largely supported by Community Arts Network Western Australia, who in 2010 hosted another workshop series in Narrogin by Searles and fellow textiles artist Cecile Williams, and in 2017 established workshops for Yued/Noongar families who had lived on the New

Norcia Mission. Outcomes of all these projects gained national recognition. The exhibition Yarns of the Heart: Noongar dolls from the Southern Wheatbelt, curated by former New Norcia Mission ‘homie’ Sharyn Egan showed at the Western Australian Museum in 2011, and Narrogin dolls were included in the Museum of Contemporary Art’s string theory: Focus on contemporary Australian Art in 2013.

Acknowledging this profoundly significant tradition, REPRESENT (Part 1) includes a very early fibre sculpture by Mrs. Winsley (which precedes her use of Guildford Grass) kindly loaned by the Janet Holmes à Court Collection, and a family of dolls

by Mrs. Bolton. These works are accompanied by a print by Laurel Nannup depicting her memories of making dolls with her family in Pinjarra, prior to being taken to Wandering Mission as a child.

REPRESENT: ABORIGINAL FIGURATIVE PRACTICE IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA (PART 1)

Laurel Nannup Another Story to Tell - Making Dollies (Edition 2/5), 2015 71 x 73.5 cm EXREP-0002 $3520

Mrs. M. Bolton Family group: Pedro, Katie, Paul and Sara, 2003 Repurposed textiles, wool and cotton thread Dimensions variable EXREP-0001 Private Collection NOT FOR SALE

Mrs. J. Winsley Untitled, c 1995 Stitched fibre 32 x 34 x 23 cm EXREP-0010 Janet Holmes à Court Collection NOT FOR SALE 11

Sandra Hill “My recent work refers to the Government’s attempts to superimpose ‘white’ domestic values over South-West Nyungar culture and onto Aboriginal women in the late 1950s and 60s…The work represents the sense of alienation, unacceptance and acute disapproval that Aboriginal people experienced because culturally, they had little to no appreciation for the materialistic trappings of ‘white’ domesticity.”

Sandra Hill, artist’s statement from Coming Home exhibition at Mossenson Galleries, 2020

Sandra Hill is a Minang/Wardandi/ Bibbulmun/Ballardong Noongar artist, public artist, educator, community leader and Elder based in Balingup, Western Australia. Hill’s works explore her own and her family’s experiences as multigenerational survivors of the Stolen Generations, while commenting more broadly on Noongar women’s experiences of colonialism.

Hill was taken from her family at the age of seven in 1958, making her part of the third generation of her family to be forcibly removed and placed in a State institution.

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Like her mother before her, Hill was taken to the notoriously brutal Sister Kate’s orphanage for ‘half-caste’ children, along with three siblings who were all told that their mother had abandoned them, and their father was dead. She was fostered out to a white family until she married at age seventeen, by which time she was already establishing her art practice as a way of healing and sharing her story. It was not until 1985 that she was reunited with her biological parents after twenty seven years, and able to learn about her rich cultural heritage.

Today Hill is one of Western Australia’s most respected artists. Her works feature in the collections of the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the Berndt Museum of Anthropology, the Janet Holmes à Court Collection, the Kidman/Cruise Collection, the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, Parliament House of Western Australia and the Western Australian Museum, among many others.

FORM thanks the artist, Mossenson Galleries and the Janet Holmes à Court Collection for the inclusion of Sandra’s works in this exhibition.

Sandra Hill Maid to Order / In Training, 2010 Mixed media 112 x 91.5 cm EXREP-0007 Janet Holmes à Court Collection NOT FOR SALE

REPRESENT: ABORIGINAL FIGURATIVE PRACTICE IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA (PART 1)

Sandra Hill Our Place, 2019 Acrylic on wood 49 x 44.5 cm EXREP-0009 $4700 Sandra Hill Yorna, 2013 Oil on plywood 79 x 119 cm EXREP-0008 $16000

Sandra Hill First Contact, 2017 Wax encaustic, linen, gold paint, native resins, acrylic, rice paper 35 x 48 cm EXREP-0006 Janet Holmes à Court Collection NOT FOR SALE 13

Julie Dowling Badimaya First Nations artist and activist Julie Dowling is one of Western Australia’s most iconic painters, internationally celebrated for her social realist autobiographical and political works that draw on diverse art traditions including Flemish and Renaissance portraiture, religious art, mural painting, and her Badimaya culture. She is particularly known for the incorporation of glitter and found plastic objects into her canvases to evoke the aesthetics of jewel-encrusted Christian icons, while questioning notions of beauty, value and taste, and for her starkly-haunting portraits evoking the chiaroscuro tradition in European art.

Dowling’s work shares stories of First Nations experience with uncompromising honesty, highlighting histories of colonisation and oppression, paying homage to her family and cultural heritage, and sharing her and her twin sister Carol’s experiences of belonging and exclusion as fair-skinned First Nations women whose lived experience encompasses urban and rural Western Australia. Dowling’s works in

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REPRESENT (Part 1) come from a recent series highlighting untold stories of Aboriginal slavery in the Midwest region of Western Australia.

Since her first solo exhibition at Fremantle Arts Centre in 1995, Dowling has earned national and international acclaim for her artistic vision and the political power of her work. She has exhibited in the Cologne Art Fair (1997), Beyond the Pale: Contemporary Indigenous Art, the 2000 Adelaide Biennale (2000), Strange Fruit at The Potter Museum of Art (2003), K1 #5 Cologne Germany (2017) and her solo exhibition Babanyu (Friends for Life) at The Art Gallery of Western Australia in 2018. Her work is represented in collections including Artbank, The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Kelton Foundation California, Kent-McNeil Inc. Canada, Kerry Stokes, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, The National Gallery of Australia, The National Gallery of Victoria, the National Native Title Tribunal, the Reconciliation Council of Australia, and many others.

REPRESENT: ABORIGINAL FIGURATIVE PRACTICE IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA (PART 1) Julie Dowling Great Uncle Sam, 2017 Acrylic, red ochre and mica gold on canvas 152 x 101.5 cm EXREP-0012

Julie Dowling Unknown-King, 2017 Acrylic, red ochre and mica gold on canvas 152 x 101.5 cm EXREP-0011

$25000

$23000 15

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Julie Dowling Icon to a Stolen Child: Maadya (Boss), 2016 36 x 16 cm EXREP-0015

Julie Dowling Icon to a Stolen Child: Birri-Birri (Butterfly), 2015 45 x 20 cm EXREP-0014

Julie Dowling Icon to a Stolen Child: Gugurdung (Wildlfowers), 2016 36 x 16 cm EXREP-0013

$4000

$4200

$4000

REPRESENT: ABORIGINAL FIGURATIVE PRACTICE IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA (PART 1) Julie Dowling Icon to a Stolen Child: Guwiyarlara (Green), 2017 Acrylic, red ochre and found objects on canvas 46 x 30 cm EXREP-0017

Julie Dowling Icon to a Stolen Child: Dhungga (Putting On), 2017 Acrylic, red ochre and found objects on canvas 46 x 30 cm EXREP-0016

$4500

$4500

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Dr. Pantjiti Mary McLean (c. 1928-2023) “Kakalala Story White cocky – talking, it’s caught a worm.

There is a creek and the families are camped here looking for food. Plenty of miye – kalaya – emu walking along. Papa – the dog barking at Kakalala. Some wati jilpi – old men talking.

Kids are playing. This is purkulpa ngurra – a happy camp.”

practice, McLean chose to work as a station-hand rather than to take on the domestic work generally expected of Aboriginal women, soon becoming famed as a skilled horse rider and musterer. After many years she left station life and worked in the sandalwood camps, before moving to Kalgoorlie for the remainder of her life.

McLean began painting in her fifties, initially producing work in a methodical ‘dot painting’ style Mrs. P.M. McLean, 2003 (artwork story recorded by Nalda until she was encouraged by her close friend, nonSearles, April, 2003).

Indigenous artist Nalda Searles to explore her own unique aesthetic while the pair were collaborating Born in the tri-State border area southwest on a public art project during the early 1990s. of Uluru, Mrs. P.M. McLean grew up in her McLean’s subsequent works were joyous anecdotal grandmother’s Country, Kaltukutjara (Docker depictions of daily life during her childhood in River) in the Northern Territory, and her father’s the desert. Working on the ground, she would Country, around Papulankutja (Blackstone) in Western Australia, until a harsh drought compelled paint from various points around the edges of the canvas, creating multi-directional compositions her and her husband and son to head into nonfilled with action and humour.

Indigenous settlements in the early 1950s. The family walked a vast stretch of the Warburton McLean’s work became particularly familiar to Ranges to Laverton, where Government policy Perth audiences when she was commissioned as demanded that local Aboriginal children were to be poster artist for the Perth Festival in 1996, only the raised and schooled at Mt. Margaret Mission. Her second Aboriginal artist awarded this honour. Her son was taken to the Mission, 230 km north-east of significance as a contemporary artist was later Kalgoorlie, and McLean and her husband directed recognised by an Honorary Doctorate of Letters to work on the district sheep stations. Showing the from Curtin University of Technology, in 2001. Her independent spirit that would later mark her art works are now represented in collections including

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Artbank, the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Berndt Museum of Anthropology, Janet Holmes à Court, the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, among many others.

FORM is honoured to include two of McLean’s works in REPRESENT. Big Camp with Kakalala Eating Worms is painted in the artist’s conventional style, with her trademark multiple human and animal figures and vivid orange background recalling the red dirt of central Australia. In contrast, the extraordinary and haunting Mynmar and Two Figures was one of the last (or possibly the final) works McLean completed before retiring from her art career and entering aged care in 2008. Searles found McLean painting the work on one of her regular visits to her. It is stark and minimal in comparison to her earlier compositions, but resonant with deep spiritual power.

FORM thanks the artists’ family for allowing Mrs. McLean to be included in this exhibition, and acknowledges the integral assistance of Nalda Searles in coordinating the inclusion of her works.

REPRESENT: ABORIGINAL FIGURATIVE PRACTICE IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA (PART 1) Mrs. P.M. McLean Big Camp with Kakalala, 2003 Acrylic on canvas 103 x 120 cm EXREP-0018

Mrs. P.M. McLean Untitled (Mynmar with two figures), 2008 Acrylic on canvas 123.5 x 107.5 cm EXREP-0019

$12000

$9000

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Tjanpi, Punu and Ngaanjatjarra ‘History Paintings’ Kantjupayi Benson (c. 1930-2010), Judith Yinyika Chambers (1958-2022), Nuniwa Donnovan (c. 1930-2005), Elaine Lane and Eunice Porter The Naanyatjarra Lands occupy around 250,000 square kilometres of desert adjacent to Western Australia’s tri-state border with South Australia and the Northern Territory. It was the first part of remote Western Australia to establish Aboriginal art centres, as it lies adjacent to the APY Lands where the contemporary Aboriginal art movement first emerged during the late 1970s and early 1980s. At this time, painting from the APY Lands was beginning to find a global audience, and the Federal Government’s Aboriginal Arts Board decided that the Ngaanyatjarra communities to the west would be better advised to focus on woodcraft as a point of difference, and to avoid saturating the fledgling market for Aboriginal painting. Maruku Arts and Crafts was the region’s first commercial artistic enterprise, sustaining and promoting the communities’ already well-established skills in punu (wood carving), with the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council (NPYWC) supporting multiple disciplines of women’s art, leading to the foundation of the Tjanpi Desert Weavers enterprise in 1995. Beginning through a simple workshop in Papulankutja (Blackstone) community, tjanpi (grass) weaving spread with extraordinary rapidity across central Australia, today recognised as one of the most significant mediums practiced in remote Australia.

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FORM is honoured to exhibit a very early example of tjanpi by one of the movement’s most important founding artists, Mrs. N. Donnovan, and examples of punu by leading carvers, painters and Tjanpi innovators Mrs. K. Benson and Elaine Lane. The three artists were close friends of non-Indigenous fibre artist Nalda Searles who supported the foundation of the weaving movement, and who has lent these works from her personal collection. They display the artists’ fine eye for detail, which they applied across multiple mediums. Mrs. Benson in particular created the first figurative tjanpi sculptures (a set of woven camp crockery) in 1996 and later spearheaded the creation of the iconic lifesized Tjanpi Grass Toyota that won the major prize at the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards in 2005. The contemporary Tjanpi movement will be represented in Part 2 of this exhibition in March 2024, by artists Maureen Baker, Cynthia Burke and Roma Butler.

As a result of the dominance of handcrafting, painting was not widely embraced by Ngaanyatjarra artists until the foundation of the Warburton Arts Project in 1990, and the region’s first art centre did not open until 1991 with the establishment of Irrunytju Arts. Even then, painting would take time to develop, with the majority of Ngaanyatjarra artists today

practicing punu and/or tjanpi alongside painting.

Though the majority of Ngaanyatjarra paintings today comprises semi-abstract depictions of Country, Warakurna Community in particular has maintained a significant legacy of figurative art. This representational style was dubbed ‘History Paintings’ by the Ngaanyatjarra artists, to differentiate them from their more traditional ‘Tjukurrpa’ works, semi-abstract renderings of Country and the spiritual content embedded within it. ‘History Paintings’ relate more everyday interactions between people, be they stories of first contact or colonialisation, or depictions of more recent events in Community, though traditional stories also sometimes feature. Two of the leading Warakurna figurative artists of recent decades are Mrs. J.Y. Chambers and Eunice Porter. Mrs. Chambers’ work for REPRESENT portrays an episode from the Seven Sisters Tjukkurpa, one of the most important ancestral narratives of the Ngaanyatjarra Lands. Eunice Porter is particularly celebrated for her depictions of remote community life, and here presents two historical events, including the cutting of a new road between Warakurna and Walu – an important site to Porter’s family, who helped cut the road.

REPRESENT: ABORIGINAL FIGURATIVE PRACTICE IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA (PART 1) Mrs. K. Benson Two Snakes, 1996 River Redgum 55 x 15 x 15 & 42 x 14 x 14 cm EXREP-0020 Private Collection NOT FOR SALE

Elaine Lane Two Snakes, 1996 River Redgum 70 x 9 x 2 & 61 x 9 x 2 cm EXREP-0022 Private Collection NOT FOR SALE

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Mrs. N. Donnovan Tjanpi dog, circa 1997 Tjanpi (desert grass) and wool 77 x 27 x 23 cm EXREP-0021 Private Collection NOT FOR SALE

Mrs. J.Y. Chambers Kunangurra Rockhole and Seven Sisters Dreaming, 2016 Acrylic on canvas 76.2 x 101.6 cm EXREP-204-16 $3420

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$3980

REPRESENT: ABORIGINAL FIGURATIVE PRACTICE IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA (PART 1)

Eunice Yunurupa Porter Lirrun, 2017 Acrylic on canvas 76.2 x 101.6 cm EXREP-779-17

Eunice Yunurupa Porter Cutting the Road to Walu, 2017 Acrylic on canvas 101.6 x 152.4 cm EXREP-41-17 $6980

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West Pilbara Figurative Practice Clifton Mack (1952-2019) and Nyaparu (William) Gardiner (1943-2018)

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Painting was first introduced to the Aboriginal communities of the Pilbara in the early 2000s, when a group of artists from Cheeditha community gathered to paint at the old Galbraith & Co. store in Cossack, soon joined by other local Aboriginal people with an interest in art. Yindjibarndi Elder Mr. C. Mack was among this initial group of painters and soon forged a national reputation for his abstract and figurative renderings of Yindjibarndi and Ngarluma Country. Today his work appears in collections across Australia and internationally, including The Art Gallery of Western Australia. Mack’s many depictions of the lighthouse at Cossack – a subject he continually returned to throughout his career- are iconic in their depiction of an artefact of white intervention in the landscape that he instilled with personal spiritual significance.

in Australia’s history. His father was a striker and a member of the iconic Strelley Mob, the core group of former strikers who went on to run the Pilbara’s first Aboriginal-owned pastoral lease, Strelley Station, outside of Port Hedland. A tireless worker throughout his life, Mr. Gardiner focused on raising his large family and did not let himself embrace his life-long passion for art until he retired in 2013. For the last five years of his life he painted daily at FORM’s Spinifex Hill Studios, creating an extraordinary body of work documenting his memories of a life spent in the northwest of Australia and the hard-working men he grew up alongside. His work is represented in collections including The Art Gallery of South Australia, The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Kerry Stokes, The Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory and The Western Australian Museum.

Mr. N.W. Gardiner was raised in the wake of the 1946 Pilbara Pastoral Workers’ Strike, the first mobilised act of resistance by Aboriginal workers

REPRESENT (Part 2), opening in March 2024, will feature a number of contemporary figurative artists painting from Roebourne and Port Hedland.

REPRESENT: ABORIGINAL FIGURATIVE PRACTICE IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA (PART 1) Mr. C. Mack Jarman Island (Lighthouse), 2014 Acrylic on canvas 170 x 90 cm EXREP-3347-14 Collection of Yinjaa-Barni Art NOT FOR SALE

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Mr. N.W. Gardiner Old Fella, 2018 Acrylic on canvas 122 x 101.5 cm EXREP-18-491 $9630

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REPRESENT: ABORIGINAL FIGURATIVE PRACTICE IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA (PART 1) Mr. N.W. Gardiner Untitled, 2018 Acrylic on canvas 91.5 x 61 cm EXREP-18-1055

Mr. N.W. Gardiner Near Looma, 2016 Acrylic on canvas 91.5 x 101.5 cm EXREP-16-1146

$4410

$8080

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East Pilbara Figurative Practice Yunkurra Billy Atkins (c. 1940-2021), Wurta Amy French, Noreena Kadibil, Jatarr Lily Long, and Helen Dale Samson a painting style notably distinct from the majority of other senior Martu painters whose Country lies further inland. Rich in its almost-Fauvist use of colour and movement, their works chart the landforms and stories of their Country around Karlamilyi National Park, revealing what to Western eyes may appear to be stark An unashamedly political artist, Mr. Atkins used and inhospitable desert as a multi-dimensional his work as a platform to staunchly oppose cultural space, rich in colour and life. The sisters the development of mining interests in the paint solo and collaborative works, together and Kumpupirntily area, while passing on important with their younger sibling Helen Dale Samson cultural information regarding the presence of Putijarra artist Mr. Y.B. Atkins began painting and who is known for her colourful depictions of dangerous spiritual beings, and the protocols of carving independently in the early 2000s, before remote Martu communities such as Jigalong and most Martu artists. He played an instrumental role engaging with their Country. His highly-celebrated Puntawarri. Fellow senior Martu artist Noreena work was selected for the 2003 and 2017 Telstra in the development of art practice in the Martu Kadibil paints highly-detailed stories of daily life National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art lands and the establishment of Martumili Artists.

Awards, and acquired by The Art Gallery of Western on Country. Kadibil is well aware of the important Born at Palatji (Palarji, Weld Springs, Canning of storytelling, as the daughter of the late Mrs. Stock Route Well 9) and growing up around Wiluna, Australia, the National Gallery of Australia and D. Kadibil (1923-2018), the youngest of the three many others, while his animation Cannibal Story he was a senior custodian of some of the most sisters who escaped the Moore River Native sacred and dangerous sites in the Western Desert; (a collaboration with Sohan Ariel Hayes), has Settlement in 1931 before walking over 1,600 Kumpupirntily (Lake Disappointment) and Jilukurru screened in film festivals around the globe. km home, whose story (as documented by Doris whose Jukurrpa (Dreaming) stories include the The early Martu figurative tradition was also Pilkington) was adapted into the iconic Australian ancestral Ngayurnangalku (cannibal beings) and championed by Warnman sisters Wurta Amy film Rabbit Proof Fence (2002).

Wati Kujarra (Two Goanna Men). Narrowly avoiding French and Jatarr Lily Long, who have maintained being taken away by missionaries as a child, his Painting skills began filtering into the Martu communities of the East Pilbara from the north, through the influence of artists such as Mrs. N. Nungabar (c. 1919-2016) and Mrs. N. Wompi (c.

1939-2017). Returning to their Martu homelands after first taking up painting in Balgo, these artists helped ignite the powerful tradition of Martu semiabstract renderings of Country for which Martumili Artists is famed. However a rich Martu figurative practice also emerged alongside this.

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youth was subsequently spent with his elders, living a pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) lifestyle and learning about his culture on Country.

He later worked on pastoral stations around the Pilbara before relocating to Jigalong Aboriginal community, to be closer to his homelands.

$3730

REPRESENT: ABORIGINAL FIGURATIVE PRACTICE IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA (PART 1)

Mr. Y.B. Atkins Kupayura (Kupayiyura, Savory Creek), 2014 91 x 91 cm Acrylic on canvas EXREP-14-303

Mr. Y.B. Atkins Parnajarrpa (sand goanna), 2019 76 x 34.5 cm Acrylic on canvas EXREP-19-989 $1160 29

Jatarr Lily Long Karlamilyi, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 150 x 150 cm EXREP-19-159 $3630

Collaboration by Lily Jatarr Long and Amy French Wurta Landscape, 2016 Acrylic on canvas 121 x 90 cm EXREP-16-540a $5720

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$8380

REPRESENT: ABORIGINAL FIGURATIVE PRACTICE IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA (PART 1)

Collaboration by Lily Long Jatarr, Helen Samson Dale and Amy French Wurta Wantili (Warntili, Canning Stock Route Well 25), 2018 Acrylic on canvas 150 x 150 cm EXREP-18-398b

Noreena Kadibil Kangaroo hunting, 2018 Acrylic on canvas 91 x 121 cm EXREP-18-1181 $2420

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The Mowanjum Wandjina Gordon Barunga, Kall um Mungulu, and Leah Umbagai

“The Wandjina is the creator spirit that belongs to us: the Wororra, Ngarinyin and Wunumbul people.

He is the one that created everything; our culture, law and songs and even the dreaming of each child before they are born.”

Mowanjum Artists

The Worrorra, Ngarinyin and Wunumbal tribes make up the Mowanjum community outside Derby.

These three language groups are united by their depiction of the Wandjina as spiritual and creation beings, custodians of tradition and lore.

Removed from their northern homelands in the early 1900s, first to Kunmunya Presbyterian Mission, then to Wotjulum, near Yampi Sound, the community was eventually settled on Nykina country near Derby, far from their sacred Wandjina caves. In 1975, they were shifted once again, to their present site east of Derby off the Gibb River Road, and in 1998 the Mowanjum Aboriginal Art and Cultural Centre was established to safeguard their strong connection with their homelands, through continued cultural and ceremonial practice, visits to sacred sites, and community

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programming. The art centre additionally hosts exhibitions, workshops and the annual Mowanjum Festival, one of Australia’s longest running indigenous cultural events.

the lore passed down by his father, community leader Mr. A. Barunga; alongside his Wandjina works he paints his parents’ Country in a realistic watercolour style.

Arguably the most recognisable spirit figure in Aboriginal culture, the Wandjina appears in anthropological and artistic collections around the globe. In 2000, Worrorra cultural leader, and the art centre’s first chairman Donny Woolagoodja designed an enormous Namarali Wandjina for the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games, reinvigorating international interest in Wandjina iconography, which continues among researchers, collectors and the general public today. For REPRESENT, Mowanjum has provided a selection of works by three of its leading artists that represent the rich diversity of Wandjina iconography. FORM is honoured to host these deeply sacred artworks and share this profound aspect of northwestern culture with metropolitan audiences.

Young Nyikina/Worrorra/Ngarinyin artist Kallum Mungulu was born in Derby in 1996 and began painting at the age of 16 while working as a tour guide through sacred sites at Wiggingarra Butt Butt (Freshwater Cove) on the Kimberley Coast, inspired by the cultural and artistic knowledge passed on to him by his grandfather Donny Woolagoodja. In addition to his painting practice he is a master totem maker and a singersongwriter for The Krui3ers.

Worrorra artist Gordon Barunga was born in Derby in 1961 and worked at a number of Kimberley cattle stations before starting to paint, inspired by his artist mother, the late Mrs. P. Barunga, and

Worrorra artist Leah Umgabai was born in 1974 and raised by Donny Woolagoodja and Mildred Mungulu. She is an Executive Councillor for Mowanjum as well as its remote Larinyuoar outstation, and in addition to her art practice is one of the Kimberley’s top basketball players. Her works are represented in collections including The Art Gallery of Western Australia, the Western Australian Museum and the Western Australian Parliament.

REPRESENT: ABORIGINAL FIGURATIVE PRACTICE IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA (PART 1) Gordon Barunga Rimmijbudda (cloud and rain spirirt), 2023 Acrylic on canvas 60 x 30 cm EXREP-23-0018

Gordon Barunga Wadjina & Ungud (cloud and rain sprirts & totem), 2023 Acrylic on canvas 60 x 30 cm EXREP-23-0016

Gordon Barunga Wadjina & Ungud (cloud and rain sprirts & totem), 2023 Acrylic on canvas 80 x 60 cm EXREP-23-0182

$660

$660

$2200

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Leah Umbagai Wandjina & Dumbi, 2023 50 x 70 cm Ochre & acrylic on canvas EXREP-23-0142 $2200

Kallum Mungulu Lailai, 2022 Acrylic on canvas 207.5 x 142.5 cm EXREP-22-0194 $10045

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REPRESENT: ABORIGINAL FIGURATIVE PRACTICE IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA (PART 1) Leah Umbagai Gyorn Gyorn 1, 2023 146 x 70 cm Ochre & acrylic on canvas EXREP-23-0113

Leah Umbagai Gyorn Gyorn 2, 2023 146 x 70 cm Ochre & acrylic on canvas EXREP-23-0114

$3850

$3850

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Art Centres Bunbury Regional Art Gallery’s Noongar Art Program Martumili Artists FORM’s Spinifex Hill Studio Tjanpi Desert Weavers Warakurna Artists Yinjaa-Barni Art

Acknowledgements FORM would like to thank the participating art centres and artists for their involvement in this project.

REPRESENT was published by FORM Building a State of Creativity Inc in October 2023, to accompany the exhibition of the same name at FORM Gallery.

FORM Building a State of Creativity Inc. 39 Gugeri Street Claremont, Western Australia, 6010

Curated by Andrew Nicholls with the participating artists and art centres, and cultural consultancy from Noongar Elder Sharyn Egan Project managed by Amber Norrish Text by Andrew Nicholls

FORM Gallery 4 Shenton Road, Claremont, Western Australia, 6010 mail@form.net.au + 61 8 9385 2200

© FORM 2023. All rights reserved.

Copyright for imagery and written content in this publication is held by FORM Building a State of Creativity or the individual contributors, where applicable.

Every effort has been made to adhere to best practice ICIP protocols. www.form.net.au

Exhibition Presented By

Creative Thinker Partner

Government Partners

@formwa | @formgalleryandcafe 38