EXHIBITION OF WORKS BY TWELVE FIRST NATIONS ARTISTS
4 FEBRUARY TO 8 MARCH 2025 WHAT DO YOU SEE?
JGM Gallery presents What do you see? an exhibition featuring the works of twelve First Nations contemporary artists.
What do you see? follows John Berger's assertion that "The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe" (Berger, 1972). The reception of Indigenous contemporary art has historically been mediated by assumptions that work in this category is isolated from global nfluence, stylistically homogeneous, and 'traditional' as opposed to contemporary This exhibition seeks to counter these beliefs by presenting a suite of works which embody some of the complex networks of influence, diverse and specific cultural contexts, and permutations of sacred culture that exist in the Indigenous contemporary art field. As JGM Gallery Director, Jennifer Guerrini Maraldi, says, "The works exhibited in What do you see? demonstrate the plurality of styles and aesthetics of Indigenous contemporary art, and invite us to question both how and why these manifest in different geographic regions of the Australian continent."
Artists from eight distinct Indigenous language, social and nation groups are exhibited in What do you see? their uses of medium, form and content as varied as the cultures to which they belong. Their Country collectively extends from Blue Mud Bay in the north to Bentinck Island in the east, to Coober Pedy in the south, and the Great Sandy Desert in the west. A facet of the exhibited works is what each communicates about the artist's specific relationship to these geographies, and to their peoples' art histories and enduring traditions. These relationships are expressed through practices which both continue and expand 'traditional' culture.
The paintings of Wägilak artist and Chairman of Ngukurr Arts, Wally Wilfred, and Dhalwangu artist, Manini Gumana, for example, share an aesthetic sensibility but also differ on several counts. Wilfred and Gumana both infill marked out designs with fine linework, in Gumana's case achieved through the use of a marwat a thin brush often fashioned from human hair and a common instrument for the practices of Yolngu artists. Yet while in Wilfred's Mokuy (2022) and Ngaraka (Bones) (2024) lines run parallel on a diagonal, in Garrapara Gumana crosshatches using black and white ochre pigments on bark. Wilfred and Gumana's diverging approaches to linework arguably reflect the two miny'tji (clan designs) of the Dhuwa and Yirritja moieties of the Yolngu peoples, of which Wilfred belongs to the former and Gumana the latter.
Both artists thus reference local customs, however, other streams o innovation and influence also converge in their work. From 2012, Gumana was the first Yolngu artist to paint directly on bark without an earth pigment base layer and to outline her designs with a marwat instead of a thick brush. Wilfred's graphic figures and fluorescent palette bear the influence of his grandfather, a respected Yolngu custodian and artist, Djambu Barra Barra, who painted in a style and medium which shared a greater affinity with art of the Roper River region than to Yolngu aesthetic sensibilities. The experimentation with 'traditional' Yolngu methods of representation in Gumana's work, and the merging of these principles with features of work from Roper River in Wilfred's, suggest the duality of Yolngu culture and more expansive sources of influence in the work of both artists.
Seven paintings by four female Warlpiri artists demonstrate the strengths and consistency of work from Lajamanu in the Tanami Desert. Formally, these paintings resemble each other closely every artist recreating their different Jukurrpa (Dreaming, or creation time) in a hallucinogenic palette. Multivalent, curvilinear figures are unanimously represented with layers of surrounding radials, as if they emanate a visible aura. In these works is thus an overwhelming sense of the power of the earth's surface as it is seen and felt by the artists.
Above all, What do you see? asks the viewer to consider how their perception of Indigenous contemporary ar changes through contextualisation, and what other possibilities for seeing the world and being in it are opened by this process.
Exhibiting artists: George Cooley · Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori Manini Gumana · Lily Nungarrayi Hargraves · Myra Patrick Herbert Margaret Pamparriya Martin Alison Munti Riley · Rosie Napurrurla Tasman Clifford Japaljarri Thompson Alma Kalaju Webou · Wally Wilfred Ju ie Yatjitja
Julie Yatjitja in Indulkana, 2022. Image courtesy of Iwantja Arts.
Alison Munti Riley, Wanganu (Damper Seed) I (detail), 2024, acrylic on linen, 120cm x 90cm.
Image courtesy of Studio Adamson.
FOREWORD
by JENNIFER GUERRINI MARALDI
The landscape of the Central Desert is home to many communities whose topography includes high escarpments, rocky outcrops, rivers, waterholes, trees, and other sma er vegetation. Arnhem Land boasts beautiful blue bays, coastlines s houetted by mangroves, and a heavily wooded interior. Through my travels to remote regions of Australia I have gained a greater understanding of the nuances of Indigenous cultures, their systems of belief, and their familial connectedness to their Country
Such first-hand experience amongst the contemporaries of the world’s longest unbroken culture and their expansive knowledge of the earth and cosmos has been truly humbling for me. Their stewardship of every aspect of nature with attentiveness, sensitivity and respect is of ultimate importance and is an example of ecological thought in practice to the people of today.
The most poignant moments I can remember from my time visiting art centres in Australia were listening to groups of female artists painting communally while singing up Country and being welcomed to Country with a fire smoking ceremony The relevancy of traditional beliefs to contemporary artistic practices is a crucial aspect of Indigenous contemporary art So too, are the constellations of influence in which each of the exhibiting artists work, by example, the echoes of street art, cartography and Kaytetye body paint designs in the work of Clifford Thompson Japaljarri.
The works exhibited in What do you see? demonstrate the plura ity of styles and aesthetics of Indigenous contemporary art and invite us to question both how and why these manifest in different geographic regions of the Australian cont nent.
Jennifer Guerrini Maraldi, 2024. Image courtesy of Julius Killerby.
Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori, My Country, 2009, synthetic polymer paint on linen, 136cm x 121cm. Image courtesy of Studio Adamson.
LIVING TRACKS
NETWORKS IN Indigenous Contemporary ART
BY
ANTONIA CRICHTON-BROWN
What do you see? is an exhibition about the perception of Indigenous contemporary art. It starts from the principles that our preconceptions often determine how we engage with a work of art and that our assumptions can reduce our appreciation and understanding of it. This was historically the case in approaches towards Indigenous contemporary art, demonstrated by the primitive bias of many twentieth-century analyses of work from the genre. This essay accompanies the exhibition to highlight the multiplicity of individual contexts in which the exhibited works were produced, and to elucidate the connections between them. These works tell of diverse artistic practices, local and specific knowledge, proximity and distance, the personal and planetary implications of art, tradition and breaking with it, the idea that, as John Berger wrote, "Every image embodies a way of seeing."
The paintings of two women artists, working 340 miles apart across the Gulf of Carpentaria, demonstrate the plural ways of seeing that are implicit in Indigenous contemporary art practices. The octogenarian Kaiadilt abstractionist, Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori (1924-2015), painted My Country in 2009, the same year in which the younger artist, Manini Gumana (b. 1977), painted Garrapara. Both images are depictions of the artists' respective sea country: the coastal waters on Bentinck Island’s southern side where Gabori was born and a sacred burial area in Blue Mud Bay for Gumana’s Dhalwangu clan. The subject of these salt waters is, however, addressed differently by each artist.
Gabori portrays her country as a vastly abstracted colour field. Landscape, and moreover its depiction from an aerial perspective, can be interpreted from the painting's rugged texture and arrangement of colour in distinct blocks, but namely from its title. Gabori’s country was Mirdidingki, the toponym that her forename comes from, its suffix -ngathi translating from Kayardild language as "born at". Gabori's identification with this place is implied by the possessive in My Country's title and the perceivable intimacy of the artist's contact with her medium. In My Country, Gabori smeared technicolour acrylic across the breadth of the canvas. Her broad lashes of paint bleed at the contact points between colours, showing the speed at which she worked and her alla prima (wet on wet) treatment.
in earthy ochres. In a Western frame of analysis, crosshatching is used to give the impression of a plane image's tone and its three-dimensionality which in part is also true of Gumana’s depiction. A mesh of layered linework creates depth in the image and alludes to Garrapara's deep waters, while the zigzagged and intersecting boundaries of these crosshatched segments liken to cresting waves.
In Garrapara, however, form also represents the metaphysical world. The desired effect of rarrk in Yolngu painting from eastern Arnhem Land is, as Howard Morphy describes, to transform a "relatively flat dull surface to one of bir’yun (shimmering brilliance)" which is "a manifestation of the ancestral power that lies behind the painting." Garraparas geometry encodes the miny’tji (clan designs) of Gumana's Yirritja moiety, which the Yolngu believe are the residue or footprint left by the ancestral beings on the country during Wangarr (Dreaming, or creation time). Gumana's mark making and patterns therefore imitate the
actions which both created the world and continue to make it meaningful. Gumana tells us that there is a physical link between creation, the world and ourselves, a connection emphasised by her use of bark as a canvas and naturally occurring ochres as paints. Through Gumana's practice, bark from the artist's immediate environment is transmuted to a sculptural object, into a metaphor in a London gallery for the physical world of eastern Arnhem Land. Gumana similarly transforms ochres into paints which she uses to depict the life and history of her physical world, meaning which is again transported, conveying Gumana's experience cross-culturally.
"EVERY IMAGE EMBODIES A WAY OF SEEING."
My Country's formation of shocking white, pink, orange and blue contours suggests vast passages of sand, salt, sea and sky made iridescent by bright sunshine. Brilliant colour such as this also tells of the vibrancy Gabori felt from the world that she saw.
- JOHN BERGER
My Country evokes an attitude of observing and spontaneously reproducing the appearance of a landscape as it changes under shifting light conditions in a passing moment, and this relates further to Gabori's biography. Gabori and the other Kaiadilt people of Bentinck Island were forcibly removed by missionaries to Mornington Island in 1948, which catalysed decades of immense social and geographic dislocation. It was during this period that Kayardild was hardly ever spoken and traditional culture was virtually abandoned. Gabori returned to Bentinck Island in the 1990s when a small outstation was built in the southeast at Nyinyilki, yet even then it was not to stay but to visit. When she began painting at Mornington Island Arts, Gabori had spent half her life separated from her country, witnessing the dampening of her culture and language. Gabori’s personal life informs a biographical reading of her collected works, as they were not only vigorous and fervently produced but also stylistically idiosyncratic, as are paintings by other Kaiadilt women artists practicing in the same era. These works arguably embody Gabori's individuated way of seeing and comprehending her world.
Gumana's portrayal of Garrapara conversely draws on traditional Yolngu aesthetics, techniques and culturally significant motifs. Painting on bark, Gumana uses a marwat (hair of the head), a brush fashioned from human hair, to mark out rectilinear designs which she then infills with rarrk (crosshatching)
This cross-culturality is paralleled in two paintings, Mokuy (2022) and Ngaraka (Bones) (2024), by Wägilak artist, Wally Wilfred (b. 1958). While Wilfred is Yolngu, like Gumana, his use of acrylic paint and vivid hues contrasts the canonical use of organic mediums by many Yolngu artists. Wilfred's choice of colour and medium is partially due to his relocation in his adolescence from his country, Ngilipidji, west of Blue Mud Bay, to Ngukurr which is located on the Roper River in southeastern Arnhem Land. Wilfred's style reflects more closely the aesthetics of the movement initiated in this region by his grandfather, Djambu Barra Barra, among other artists. As in the case of many artistic centres established in the remote communities of Australia, Ngukurr grew out of a mission
(1908-1968), which was in effect a protectorate for Aboriginal people of many different language groups escaping the violence of the colonial frontier. Barra Barra revised the traditional X-ray images and rarrk technique of Yolngu bark art through a fluorescent palette on canvas. It is as Judith Ryan writes: Senior Indigenous people, living in exile from their homelands, forced to live according to the dictates of the colonisers, have invented cutting-edge art forms at the very heart of loss."10
Wilfred continues his grandfather's modification of Y olngu representation, painting, however, on sheets of metal rather than canvas and scouring into this material's surface to create a modulation of tone. Wilfred describes these markings as "tyre tracks in the metal," alluding to the influence of both Western 11
modernity and travel in his work. Mokuy and Ngaraka (Bones) are perhaps the most readable through Western eyes because of their representation of human features. In Mokuy, Wilfred outlines the figure of a mokuy (sinister or shadow spirit), which in Yolngu languages is the ghost of a deceased person. The viewer finds an immediate point of contact between the image world of the Yolngu and themselves through the face of this figure. In the mokuy's wide eyes, open mouth and raised hands, one cannot help but find an aspect of spooky humour, as if the ghost is saying, "boo!" This sonic quality is further enhanced by two figures playing musical instruments and singing while another two dance, demonstrating how to perform the mokuy dance. Wilfred's image is both engaging and instructional to viewers besides the Yolngu and therefore communicates cross-culturally. This, as Henry F. Skerritt notes, is a global theme in contemporary art, where its makers are "seeking ways to forge connections between disparate and seemingly
Manini Gumana, Garrapara (detail), 2009, natural ochres on bark, 114cm x 65cm. Image courtesy of Julius Killerby.
incommensurate consciousnesses."
Seven paintings by four Warlpiri women demonstrate the consistency of schema and symbolism in paintings from the Lajamanu Aboriginal community. Rosie Napurrurla Tasman (c.1935-2018), Lily Nungarrayi Hargraves (1930-2018), Myra Nungarrayi Herbert (b.c. 1946) and Margaret Pamparriya Martin (d. 2023) represent a generation of artists who reached their adolescence walking across the Tanami Desert in time to the rhythm of environmental change. These artists later began a more sedentary life in Lajamanu, which became one of a second wave of artistic centres for Indigenous contemporary art in 1986 after the example set by the artists of Papunya Tula. In part, the impetus for making work in the cases of the Papunya and Lajamanu schools was that painting could be educational for Europeans and for future generations of Aboriginal people, and that it brought a means of financial sustenance to remote Indigenous communities. These factors contributed to a growing economic and political empowerment and selfdeterminacy among the Indigenous peoples of these communities after many had experienced enormous social and cultural upheaval. It was at this time that, as Christine Nicholls writes, "almost every member of the community was making art."
A common thread which links these four women's paintings is the repetition of potent and graphic motifs clustered together in turgid formations. The arrangement and seriality of these symbols across all seven works demonstrate the artists' shared aesthetic and belief system. Hargraves' and Martin's paintings of the turkey Jukurrpa (Dreaming, or creation time), for example, both picture the splayed, three-toed footprints of the wardilyka (bush turkey). The contrast between the pictorial simplicity and the grandeur of the painting's scale in Hargraves' Turkey Dreaming (2015) conveys the artist's certainty in the value of these motifs. Tasman's Seed Dreaming (2010) is similarly composed of a motif that is replicated in depictions of the same Jukurrpa from Lajamanu. In this painting, two pillars of transverse lines converge on a central roundel, representing travel from different directions to the site of the Dreaming. On either side of these pillars, arcs indicate the gathering and transportation of seeds in coolamons, vessels made from the bark of a tree and moulded over a fire. The
outline of these motifs in bright white heightens them, and their encirclement in neon orange and blue radials crystallises the image's intensity. Tasman's design is concentrated on the central column of motifs, an emphasis which further conveys her belief in the significance of Warlpiri law.
Seed Dreaming hangs as a triptych beside Martin's Turkey Dreaming (2010) and Herbert’s Women’s Dreaming (2023), all vertical compositions in rectangular frames. The structure of these works resembles the first examples of paintings using Western materials to be made by Warlpiri artists in Lajamanu. These works, which were painted mostly by senior law men with housepaint on towering composition boards, are known as the Lajamanu panels. Tasman's, Martin's and Herbert's paintings are, however, on a smaller, more transportable scale than their predecessors, and are painted with elongated markings rather than pointillist dot work. The elders who painted the Lajamanu panels described their ambition before the project's initiation in 1986 as, to "give a glimpse of the way we venerate the sacred Heroes who have given us our identity so that Europeans can have some understanding of what we are, and of how strongly we feel about being allowed to remain ourselves." Tasman, Martin and Herbert express a similar desire through their paintings, which – emphasised by their rectangular composition – behave like portals to Warlpiri culture.
Each work exhibited in What do you see? is an evocation of its artist’s worldview, their relationship outward to the realities that lie beyond what can be represented. The networks made manifest by Indigenous contemporary art are multiple and far reaching, connecting its artists, their creation stories, different earth-bound and celestial geographies, non-Indigenous people, their cultures and philosophies. Indigenous contemporary art reminds us that we have never been closer in terms of accessing and understanding all the diverse and coeval realities of our world, and that recognising these differences is a movement towards greater unity.
John Berger, “Chapter 1,” Ways of Seeing, https://www.ways-of-seeing.com/ch1 (accessed 23 January 2025).
All works referenced are exhibited in What do you see? at JGM Gallery London (4 February - 8 March 2025).
Berger, Ways of Seeing
Nicholas Evans and Penelope Johnson give an account of the mission's strategies to prevent Kaiadilt people from speaking their own language and the cultural effects of the Kaiadilt people’s separation from their ancestral lands to support their analysis of the emergence of Kaiadilt women’s art and their idiosyncratic styles. In Nicholas Evans and Penelope Johnson, “Bilda Miburiji Kurrij (Seeing with Far Eyes): The Root of Kaiadilt Womens Art,” Art Journal 49, 12 September 2013, https://www.ngv.vic. gov.au/essay/bilda-miburiji-kurrij-seeing-with-far-eyes-the-root-of-kaiadilt-womensart/ (accessed 23 January 2025).
Sally Gabori had a prolific nine-year career from 2005-2015, painting over 2000 works; Evans and Johnson write that, “Each has invented her own distinctive artistic language for showing us how they see their world.” In Evans and Johnson, “Bilda Miburiji Kurrij.”
Howard Morphy, “Making the familiar unfamiliar: The aesthetics of eastern Arnhem Land art,” in Hetti Perkins and Margie West (Eds.), One Sun One Moon: Aboriginal Art in Australia (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2000), 73-74.
The idea that mark making mimics the act of creation is one taken from John Carty’s essay on Carlene West, “Carlene West: The End of Exploring,” in Henry F Skerritt (Ed.), Marking the Infinite: Contemporary Women Artists from Aboriginal Australia (Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2016), 92-105.
Of course, there are Yolngu artists who work with materials that are not naturally occurring. Nonggirrnga Marawili, for example, used printer ink found on country in her later career. More recently, scrap metal is being used as a medium from which to create carved 'paintings', as in the work of Gunybi Ganambarr.
In 2021, Ngukurr had a population of about 1000 people from around nine different language groups.
Judith Ryan, “From Reckitts Blue to Neon: The Colour and Power of Aboriginal Art,” in Judith Ryan (Ed.), Colour Power: Aboriginal Art post 1984 (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria: 2004), 99.
Wally Wilfred, in conversation with Ngukurr Arts, 2022. Ibid.
Henry F. Skerritt, “Marking the Infinite,” in Skerritt (Ed.), Marking the Infinite, 13.
See Judith Ryan, “A bold aesthetic: the Lajamanu panels,” Art Journal 30 (18 June 2014), https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/a-bold-aesthetic-the-lajamanu-panels/ (accessed 23 January 2025).
Christine Nicholls, “Painting with Passion and Purpose: Yuendumu, Lajamanu, Willowra, Nyirrpi and Ikuntji,” in Perkins and West (Eds.), One Sun One Moon 195.
Ryan, “A bold aesthetic.”
From D’un Autre Continent: L’Australie le Rêve et le Réel, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, 1983, 49. In Ryan, “A bold aesthetic.”
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Below: Lily Nungarrayi Hargraves, Turkey Dreaming, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 200cm x 300cm. Image courtesy of JGM Gallery.
Right: Rosie Napurrurla Tasman, Seed Dreaming (detail), 2010, acrylic on canvas, 120cm x 60cm. Image courtesy of Studio Adamson.
artwork images
Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori, My Country, 2009, synthetic polymer paint on linen, 136cm x 121cm
Manini Gumana, Garrapara, 2009, natural ochres on bark, 114cm x 65cm
Wally Wilfred, Mokuy, 2023 acrylic on metal, 121cm x 81cm
Wally Wilfred, Naraka (Bones) 2023 acrylic on metal, 122cm x 81cm
Clifford Thompson Japaljarri, Untitled I, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 91cm x 91cm
Clifford Thompson Japaljarri, Meeting Place, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 91cm x 91cm
Myra Nungarrayi Herbert, Women's Dreaming, 2023, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 120cm x 60cm
Margaret Pamparriya Martin, Turkey Dreaming, 2010, acrylic on canvas, 120cm x 60cm
Rosie Napurrurla Tasman, Seed Dreaming, 2010, acrylic on linen, 120cm x 60cm
Rosie Napurrurla Tasman, Wampana Jukurrpa, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 150cm x 120cm
Rosie Napurrurla Tasman, Seed Dreaming, 2013, acrylic on linen, 180cm x 150cm
Rosie Napurrurla Tasman, Seed Dreaming, 2010, acrylic on canvas, 180cm x 60cm
Lily Nungarrayi Hargraves, Turkey Dreaming, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 200cm x 300cm
Alison Munti Riley, Wanganu (Damper Seed) I, 2024, acrylic on linen, 120cm x 90cm
Alison Munti Riley, Wanganu (Damper Seed) II 2024, acrylic on linen, 120cm x 90cm
Alma Kalaju Webou, Pinkalarta, 2006, acrylic on linen, 106cm x 166.5cm
Julie Yatjitja, Untitled I, 2023, acrylic on linen, 121cm x 151cm
George Cooley, Dreaming, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 157cm x 190cm
Front cover: Lajamanu. Image courtesy of Michael Erglis.
Back cover: Lily Nungarrayi Hargraves, Tanami Desert. Image courtesy of Michael Erglis.
Editorial design: Antonia Crichton-Brown & Julius Killerby.
Photography: Michael Erglis & Julius Killerby.
Artwork Photography: Studio Adamson, Julius Killerby & Benjamin Deakin.
