Exhibitions

ReDot Fine Art Gallery is honored to hosting “Wati Pulka” – Important Man, a follow up exhibition from the sell-out show by Ninuku Arts in 2012. Deriving from a tiny community in the north-western corner of South Australia, Ninuku Arts is one of the most exciting art centres to emerge over the past 5-10 years.

The exhibition, boasts an extraordinary group of master works painted by the 3 most senior men in the community together with a small body of works by 2 pretenders to their throne, Stanley and Samuel. As the traditional owners of the land these men hold the most important stories of their country deep within their hearts and are tasked with its survival and passage into the next generation.

This exhibition is a bold statement about ownership and history, but also a joyous collection of paintings acting as an invitation to the viewer – an invitation onto the land of these old tribal men. As well as teaching the international audience about their culture, the show also aims to teach the emerging artists, laying down a challenge to take their cultural forward in today’s modern world.

It is critical to the continuation of this great indigenous culture that it is taught to the future generations.

As senior man and Ngangkari (traditional healer) Harry Tjutjuna describes, “Old generation are here now and I am old generation too. Lots of old generation have passed away. What can we do? What happens when I pass away? New generation got to learn Tjukurpa (Dreaming Stories).”

Harry Tjutjuna is the most senior of the artists exhibiting. His unique style and approach has made him one of the most sought-after practicing artists in the country. He paints a range of stories with both authority and courage. He is known for the drippy, painterly qualities in his technique, and is a natural colourist often choosing a palette of vibrant, poppy hues.

Senior artist Jimmy Donegan is another artist inspired by the colourful landscape, using a plethora of colours to depict his Tjukurpa (or Dreaming stories). Donegan continues to be celebrated as one of the most sought-after artists from the district to Australian and International collectors, galleries and institutions, since winning the prestigious Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Telstra Art Award in 2010.

Sandy Brumby joins these two colossal heavy weights, born in the bush at Victory Downs, an outstation near Pukatja (Ernabella), he was a stockman for many years, long before Kalka and the Pipalyatjara communities existed. In 2010, in his sixties, Sandy Brumby picked up a paint brush for the first time and since has religiously painted, discovering a passion for paint and need to tell his story. The marks he uses are reminiscent of symbols seen in rock paintings around Uluru and Kata Tjuta. His paintings are raw and bold, and demonstrate a strong connection to his country and culture. He has a deep love of colour and uses a broad palette when he paints, selecting the colours that sit side by side with natural intuition.

For further information please contact Giorgio on +65 8113 5333. Email: info@redotgallery.com or check our website: www.redotgallery.com

ReDot Fine Art Gallery is honoured to host a very special show, the culmination of a series of workshops held in 2012 and early 2013 at the Jirtirlparnta Learning Centre Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, Nyirripi.

Jirtirlparnta Heart - The Nyirripi Workshops, derives its name from a purple flower common to this area coincidently, it is also an alternate name for the place where the community of Nyirripi is located and the workshops took place.

The community is approximately 440 km from Alice Springs by road and it takes 5 to 6 hours to drive there. Travelling from Alice Springs via Yuendumu and the Tanami Highway, Nyirripi is approximately 150 kilometres west-southwest of this icon Aboriginal Art Community which helps service the artistic needs of the community.

With an estimated population of 242, this Warlpiri, Pintupi and Kutkatja language cluster exists in large part due to the art practices, with over 60 regular painters attending the community centre in what has become the “social” hub of the outstation.

The workshops were the brainchild of the Warlukurlangu Art centre and Hannah “Nangala” Quinliven, whom herself grew up in Nyirripi as a young girl, speaking Warlpiri long before she could speak English. An accomplished artist in her own right, Nangala has been assisting the Yeundumu and Nyirripi communities for many years and this body of work is a culmination of many weeks and months of discussion and debate with the artists to create a body of work to assist in the telling of “their story”, in a mix of designs and colour made famous by artists of this part of the Australian outback.

Ancient stories have been re-painted, new approaches introduced, excitement created in the small community as the results of their labour became apparent over the many months the works were produced. Several collaborative works allowed culture-sharing to occur, re-connecting people with their lands and their struggles to live in harmony with the surrounding country.

The show will be officially opened by travelling artists Teddy Jakamarra Gibson, Gayle Napangardi Gibson, Christine Nakamarra Curtis and her sister Magda Nakamarra Curtis accompanied by Nagala, all eager to share their country and their stories with the Singaporean public.

For further information please contact Giorgio on +65 8113 5333. Email: info@redotgallery.com or check our website: www.redotgallery.com

ReDot Fine Art Gallery is honoured and excited to be able to release the last works by the highly esteemed Paji Wajina Honeychild Yankarr some nine years after her passing in what will fittingly be her first ever solo exhibition.

Honeychild was a founding member of Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency in the early nineties and first exhibited work in the exhibition ‘Karrayili’ in Tandanya, Adelaide, 1991. She was also represented in Images of Power: Aboriginal Art of the Kimberley, National Gallery of Victoria, 1993. She instantly gained national recognition and became one of the core group of artists at the art centre who continued to paint and exhibit consistently throughout the 1990s with her domestic appeal soon moving internationally, with a major work eventually exhibiting in the AAMU (Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Art) in Utrecht, Netherlands.

She also worked on the two eminent Ngurrara canvases in 1997, which were pivotal in proving the groups connection to country and later led to their successful Ngurrara Native Title Claim.

Her works are blatant records of her desert country with the recurring theme in her works being the Jila (waterhole) of various sites in the Great Sandy Desert which is one of the major ancestral areas for her people. As she stated in 1994, ’I put water in my paintings, places we were walking around’ and this was unchanged as her central motif until her passing.

Mangkaja’s then manager beautifully summarises her practice “To watch her paint, there was a sense that she walked around in her paintings, with the broad sweep of the brush, around the places that she walked as a young woman. The waterholes gradually took over the picture plane with the elliptical forms of the centre of the waterhole, bleeding over the edges, reconstructing precisely the view that she would have known as she drew water from the jila.”

This seminal body of work from her estate, aptly titled after her birth place ‘Kurntumarrajarra’, stands testament to an important artist and cultural leader. The inclusion of both early works on paper and her later works on canvas gives depth to her practice and an insight into an artist who’s practice spanned almost twenty years. This wonderful retrospective will forever be revered as the final and only solo exhibition of a pivotal figure in the Aboriginal Art Movement, a fitting finale for a wonderful proponent of the contemporary and modern art movement.

For further information please contact Giorgio on +65 8113 5333. Email: info@redotgallery.com or check our website: www.redotgallery.com

The ReDot Fine Art Gallery is proud to be showcasing an online exhibition - the first in a series - of beautiful works from one of Australia’s pre-eminent art centres - Mornington Island.

Like other artists from Bentinck Island, Kuruwarriyingathi Bijarrb Paula Paul came late to art and art making – but this late start has not impacted the beautiful pieces she creates, have a look at the e-catalogue attached here and you will understand what we mean, her works are spectacular.

She was born in 1937 and lived a completely traditional island life with her “sisters” – Sally Gabori, the late Dawn Naranatjil and May Moodoonuthi (who were all born in the 1920s and 30s), and Netta Loogatha, Amy Loogatha and Ethel Thomas (all born between 1942 and 1946). These women had little contact with non-Kaiadilt people and none at all with European settlers until their forced removal to Mornington Island (also part of the Wellesley Islands) in 1948 as a result of a severe drought during the 1940s and a cyclone in 1948.

On Mornington Island they lived a largely separate life within the local Lardil and Yangkaal communities for over 40 years before those able to live independently negotiated their return to Bentinck during the early 1990s. The residents of Bentinck Island, including Paula Paul, now return to Mornington Island every year to escape the severe floods of Bentinck’s wet season.

Paula Paul’s earliest paintings depicted her favourite motifs of the time: shells, rocks and oyster reefs represented as roundels of contrasting colour on darkly painted backgrounds (often blues or deep purples). She said of these works: “Along the beach of my country are big white rocks. I paint them and I paint the little white shells that are up on the beach. We call them dinghy shells.”

Paula’s work is continually evolving. Her Burrkunda (scar) paintings are constructed differently to the works that feature shells – the backgrounds are white and the marks are made using a single colour. They record the Kaiadilt tradition of marking the body: the ritualised scarring undertaken by men, and the mourning behaviour of women that involves making multiple cuts on their scalps as expressions of grief. Thick stripes of paint are used to build up a surface of markings producing sombre yet highly significant works. They are dramatic in their simplicity and beauty, and stand alone in her oeuvre.

The strong relationship between Paula Paul’s paintings and body markings was noted by anthropologist Dr Paul Memmott, who, in 1982, mapped the Kaiadilt geography of Sweers Island with Paula’s late husband, Arthur Paul.

Even though Paula paints on Mornington Island during the wet season, the work is informed by her extensive and detailed memories of Bentinck Island. She says: “I think about what they [the fish traps and reefs] look like on my country, I think about the last time I saw them and think I am there.”

Paula Paul’s work has been exhibited widely throughout Australia, most notably in commercial shows in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Darwin and Cairns. She was also part of the exhibition ’Together’ at the Sharjah Museum for Contemporary Arab Art in the United Arab Emirates in 2008, and her journey is recorded in the book The Heart of Everything: the art and artists of Mornington and Bentinck Islands, published in 2008. She also held her first solo exhibition was in Melbourne in the same year. These are significant achievements for an artist in their 70s who has been painting for only a few years.

Like many older Indigenous artists, painting for Paula is a way of describing iconography. Her stories originate in the daily lives of Bentinck Island people, both from her memory as a very young person and her experiences today. But there is also a fragility about the situation, as the tiny Kaiadilt community continues to shrink. The circumstances of their forced removal have resulted in younger generations being unable to speak their Kayardild language.

Celebrating the best of Australia in Singapore

• Experience rare Aboriginal Art from ReDot Fine Art Gallery
• Enjoy great food, wine, beer and coffee from renowned restaurants and suppliers
• Watch and listen to a special Indigenous musical performance

The Australian High Commission is holding the biggest of its major annual events showcasing Australia in Singapore, on Thursday 25 July 2013.

’AUSTRALIAN VISION’ seeks to pay tribute to NAIDOC (National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee) Week, which recognises the contributions of Indigenous Australians and celebrates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. The event also reaffirms Australia’s objective to be engaged with the Asian region, as outlined in the ’Australia in the Asian Century’ White Paper.

The guest of honour is Mr Sam Tan (Senior Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth).

This year, in addition to celebrating Indigenous music and art through special displays and performances, guests will be able to enjoy a range of outstanding food and beverages from restaurants and suppliers in Singapore with Australian links.

ReDot Fine Art Gallery, the only gallery in Singapore specialising in Australian Indigenous art, will be exhibiting a collection of fine Aboriginal artwork from the APY Lands in the far north-west of South Australia. The exhibition runs until the end of July.

Talented young Aboriginal musician Ian Wilkes will be making the trip from Western Australia to entertain guests with a traditional Indigenous performance.

Delicious food will be served up by restaurants Wooloomooloo Steakhouse, South Coast Bistro & Bar and Intrepid Gastrobar, to be complemented by fine wine from Wine Directions and Equatorial Wines. FairPrice, Singapore’s largest grocery retailer known for stocking a vast range of high-quality Australian products, will be supplying Australian cheese and beer. Dimbulah, the only coffee manufacturer in Singapore that imports directly from its plantation in Australia, will be brewing on site.

The name, ’AUSTRALIAN VISION’ is based on the official 2013 NAIDOC Week theme: ’We value the vision: Yirrkala Bark Petitions 1963’. The NAIDOC Week theme proudly celebrates the 50th anniversary of the presentation of the Yirrkala Bark Petitions to the Federal Parliament. More information can be found at http://www.naidoc.org.au/.

ReDot Fine Art Gallery is honoured to host the first solo retrospective exhibition of works by Adelaide based artist David Kelly. In an unusual departure from our regular Indigenous program, we will showcase a collection of stunning landscapes from the period 2008-2013, capturing some of the most inspiring landscapes of Western Australia plus some delicious renditions of Aboriginal country and culture from the Kimberley’s, where the artist recently spent time collaborating with Gija artists of the Warmun Aboriginal Art Centre.

As in the world of Indigenous art, David’s work has always been concerned with the telling of a story, of the connection with country, his home. Beyond a physical representation to a layering of emotions, memories and visual elements that encapsulates significant experiences and places of his life. Inevitably, time blends these influences into a uniquely individual journey through cultures, environments and encounters of great diversity. Though sometimes disparate in their nature, there exists a commonality of interpretation that brings these stories together through visual art.

‘Layers of Time’ follows his walks through Australian native bush country that surrounds his home studio. It stops to observe the ubiquitous eucalyptus trees and listen to cracking twigs in the dry summer. It looks up at shedding bark and rejuvenating new growth. It feels the cold and damp of winter with its muffled squelch and heavy shadows.

This exhibition shares time with the Gija people of Western Australia’s Kimberley, seeing their place through the eyes of a newcomer imbued with the stories of Ngarranggarni. Avian views of the Ord River twisting serpentine through the North West echo memories of Lake Eyre and the isolation of life in a remote mining town. The visual qualities of all these remembered places and times are inextricable from the emotions that still accompany them.

No single painted image is a direct representation of a physical entity, they are each an amalgam of all the human senses that we use to record experience. In practical terms, these works are composed of multiple layers, evolving over several months in most cases. The elemental processes of growth, decay, weathering and erosion are emulated by the repeated application and removal of various paints and materials. Bringing together collected works that span a period of years allows for the observation of both development and continuity. There is the opportunity to hear different stories that are linked by a consistent voice, or perhaps the same stories in a voice that has evolved with maturity.

The exhibition will be attended by the artist as he adds a special touch to proceedings and shares his thoughts and aspirations for his work.

ReDot Fine Art Gallery is thrilled to announce that the internationally celebrated Ömie women artists of Papua New Guinea will return to Singapore for a monumental exhibition of their barkcloth paintings this March. Following on from the hugely successful inaugural show in 2011, Of Spirit and Splendour will present a stunning selection of new work by the most exciting and talented artists from across the extremely remote Ömie mountain villages around Mount Lamington in Oro Province.

Ömie art is much admired for its rich, complex and diverse expression of abstract symbols pertaining to the natural world as well as to ancestral tattoo designs. Created primarily by senior Ömie tribeswomen, the barkcloths or nioge are the outcome of a long period of apprenticeship. Within their respective marital and birth clans, females learn the techniques, laws and customs that lead to the production of these beautifully crafted, spiritually rooted artworks. Powerfully tactile, the nioge that feature in this exhibition are made from veils of beaten tree bark, which are then painted in an earthy palette of colour made from bush dyes. Traditional customs dating back thousands of years are still used today, as these dyes are painted onto the material using painting sticks and brushes fashioned from a variety of rainforest plants. Both traditional motifs and original visual expressions of ancestral Ömie knowledge adorn the artworks, which are still used in both ceremonial as well as practical contexts, such as bride price gifts and clothing.

Following on from three exhibitions in the USA in 2012, including prestigious museum shows at the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles and the de Young Museum in San Francisco; Of Spirit and Splendour promises to reveal the phenomenal breadth of this traditional yet contemporary, living visual art form once again here in Singapore.

One of the most unexplored and untouched regions in the world, this area has an exceptionally diverse range of traditional tribal cultures which remain very much alive. Both Singapore’s and Australia’s proximity to the Pacific and Papua New Guinea has generated growing curiosity and interest in researching and collecting Oceanic art.

Highlights of the exhibition will be the finely worked and powerful paintings by the Paramount Chief of Ömie women, Lila Warrimou (Misaso), as well as arresting, minimalist sihoti’e mud-dyed barkcloths by the last two women remaining who create their designs with a unique and ancient sewing technique using bat-wing bones, Sarah Ugibari and Brenda Kesi (Ariré).

On viewing these paintings, with their exquisite, microcosmic detail, one can’t resist being transported to the mysterious mountain world of the Ömie, where through each symbol like a small secret revealed, it becomes irrepressibly apparent that, for the Ömie - land, culture and art are all synonymous. The creation of the nioge is an affirmation of the strength and endurance of Ömie culture and in this current renaissance of Ömie barkcloth paintings, these rare gems are being keenly collected by most significant tribal collections.

The logistics of facilitating and servicing the artists across 12 remote villages in a developing country is immense and ReDot Fine Art Gallery is honoured to be able to bring such astonishingly beautiful artworks into the gallery to share with our audience, something only a few have been able to experience worldwide.

For further information please contact Giorgio on +65 8113 5333. Email: info@redotgallery.com or check our website: www.redotgallery.com

ReDot Fine Art Gallery is honoured to host an exhibition hailing from one the most important community art centres of the Modern Contemporary Aboriginal Art movement. Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency is not only one of the oldest established art centres in the Kimberley region of Australia, the heart of the North-Western Aboriginal Art movement, but also boasts some of the most renowned protagonists of this art form.

The artists of this community are renowned for their uninhibited style and lively use of colour, painting images of country that share stories of culture and identity and over the years it has produced some of Australia’s most important Aboriginal painters and with the art centres 20th anniversary looming it was imperative that “something special” be proposed to acknowledge this landmark community’s involvement in the development of the Modern Aboriginal Art Movement.

Imagine the surprise when the current art coordinator at Mangkaja Arts, Guy Hayes, called us in Singapore to reveal with excitement the unearthing of a significant body of work on paper from the early 1990’s by three important founding artists of the community, which had been locked away in storage and previously unseen by anyone outside the community.

As to why it is that so many of these works remained un-catalogued over the years will remain a mystery but we are delighted to be able to celebrate their 20th anniversary by exhibiting these previously unseen gems.

This beautiful and simplistic body of work comprises of three of the late founding members of Mangkaja Arts, Wankurta Peanut Ford, Yata Gypsy Yadda, and Wakartu Cory Surprise. All three of these strong Walmajarri women began painting in the late eighties through the Karrayili Adult Education Centre, and participated in the landmark exhibition “Karrayili” which was held in 1991 at Tandanya National Aboriginal Institute in South Australia where some of the sister works to this show were displayed and bought extensively by museum collections across Australia.

It is only fitting that in the 20th year of the incorporation of the current art centre that Mangkaja are embarking on a significant international show and will be exhibiting works which demonstrate the raw strength of the selected artists work from the early days of the art centre. It is also poignant that these seminal acrylic works on paper will be seen for the first time; more than 20 years after “Karrayili” were exhibited to mark the launch of this pivotal art cooperative.

ReDot is absolutely honoured to have been chosen to host this important and rare show, above all the domestic Australian galleries and invites anyone fascinated by indigenous culture to step into a world that is familiar in simplicity but memorizing in depth and wonder.

For further information please contact Giorgio on +65 8113 5333. Email: info@redotgallery.com or check our website: www.redotgallery.com

The ReDot Fine Art Gallery is excited to hold its annual Stock Room Show as we close out the year and bring a little from each of our art centre relationships, be it a small gem from the desert or a majestic masterpiece from one of our Top End centres. We’ve spent some time rummaging around in our vast storeroom just for you to help make buying that something special at Christmas that little bit easier!

With so many exciting pieces to choose from, it wasn’t easy to narrow the selection down, but we are very confident that we’ve chosen the best of our best to bring you for our Christmas Stock room show commencing on the 5th of December and other pearls for our welcome to 2013 Stock room show which opens on Wednesday the 2nd of January.

It is a great way to find a unique and striking gift for that special someone during the festive season, or even a little something for you as a treat for what has been a difficult and long year!

The vibrant colours and stunning palettes that make up our stock room shows will be the perfect way to kick off the holiday season and then blow away the post festive period cobwebs.

Stop by Wednesday December 5th from 12:00 onwards for a bit of holiday cheer on our opening day and also share a glass of mulled wine and some seasonal treats.

We will also this year have a few extra works at discounted prices to make way for a whole set of new works arriving in 2013 and to prepare for our imminent move into our new gallery space. YES we are moving, but not very far… We will be staying within the artspace@Helutrans, moving to the ground floor, unit #01-05, Gallery 9, to help all our loyal guests avoid the trek upstairs currently required!!!

Give us a call to find out more and don’t miss this opportunity to add a special something from the remote Aboriginal outback to your home.