Exhibitions

ReDot Fine Art Gallery is honoured to host an exhibition hailing from the heart of Modern Contemporary Aboriginal Art. Tjungu Palya and Ninuku Arts are two artist-run art-centres in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in the far north west of South Australia. Between them they represent artists from Nyapari, Kanpi, Watarru, Angatja, Kalka and Pipalyatjara communities, with many of the artists ‘first contact’ bush people, retaining strong cultural knowledge and a willingness to share what is appropriate to people of other cultures. The centres promote traditional arts practices while also encouraging new forms of artistic expression in the re-telling of the Tjukurpa (‘Dreaming’ - Law).

These communities stand at the apex of modern Aboriginal art movement, celebrating culture, ancestry, and landscape while concurrently ensuring the sustainability of the surrounding communities. When the pursuit of artistry is coupled so consummately with care for man and earth, the results mirror that which makes this one of the purest forms of expression seen in the modern art world today. Works from these artists resonate with an abundance of cultural integrity, vivid colours, mesmerising designs, deep knowledge, encapsulating a celebration of ceremony, ancestry and landscape.

ReDot invites anyone fascinated by indigenous art to step into a world that is familiar in simplicity but memorizing in depth and wonder. The living stories virtually leap off each canvas and begs the viewer to look more deeply for meaning and consequence.

Works from these communities grace prestigious public and private collections including those most lauded across Australia and globally. Additionally, we will showcase last year’s Telstra Indigenous art award winning artist, Jimmy Donegan, as well as other acclaimed artists, such as Tiger Palpatja, Nellie Stewart, Harry Tjutjuna, Sandy Brumby, Maringka Baker, Ginger Wikilyiri, Keith Stevens, David Miller, Eileen Stevens and Nyankulya Watson, in this magnificent representation.

The show will be attended by Ginger Wikilyiri, Molly Nampitjin Miller, Yaritji Connelly and Keith Stevens, as they add a special touch to the event and share their stories of living in one of the world’s most remote locations. Also attending will be the coordinators from both art centres to add further insight into the workings of a modern Aboriginal art centre and the challenges faced by the communities from internal and external forces.

Award winning Australian artist, David Kelly, presents a stunning series of contemporary paintings in his first solo show in Singapore at the Australian High Commission ‘Atrium Gallery’.

Acclaimed by national critics and curators for his ‘fine aesthetic qualities, strength, power and lyrical freshness’, Kelly’s ‘Eucalypt’ series celebrates the results of natural elements on the surfaces of Australia’s iconic eucalyptus trees.

In a career spanning more than thirty years as an artist and teacher, his paintings are held in private, corporate, consular and national collections, both internationally and within Australia. His work has also featured in many award exhibitions, including the 2004 Artiade Olympics exhibition in Athens, as joint representative of Australia. Work from the series to be exhibited in Singapore was also awarded the 2008 Heysen Prize, judged by Sydney based author and critic, Susan McCulloch.

The physical qualities and broader symbolism of the ubiquitous ‘gum trees’ were appreciated with fresh clarity on his return to Australia after seven years in South-East Asia. Distinctive elemental inscriptions on the bark provide both a captivating visual story and poignant human metaphor, recognising unique individuals that stand alone, whilst also being an integral part of the broader community.

The centre-piece of this show, a seven panel suite covering more than twelve square metres, has drawn critical acclaim in recent exhibitions at South Australia’s Flinders University Art Museum and the prestigious Sala Kubo-Kutxa, San Sebastian, Spain.

These are paintings that invite the viewer to engage at an intimate level, discovering exquisite amalgamations of pattern, texture and colour. As though walking in a eucalypt forest, the initial impression of imposing, weathered forms gives way to a world of the delicate and sensitive.

Created using processes of heat, gravity, abrasion and fluid movement, these are artworks that capture the ‘Essence of Eucalypt’.

Admission is between 8:30am and 4:30pm, daily (Monday to Friday) and you will need an official form of identification to enter the premises. Guided tours can be arranged by contacting ReDot Fine Art Gallery on info@redotgallery.com or David Kelly on contact@davidkellypaintings.com.

ReDot Fine Art Gallery is thrilled to exhibit prodigiously collectable works from across the Australian Aboriginal territories in our inaugural Collectors Show. "Collectors Show - 2011" will be the incipient year for an annual event which will showcase the most electrifying and unexpected new works from Aboriginal artists. Included are currently collectable works as well as older pieces from established collections which ReDot has ambitiously amassed in Singapore for re-sale.

Unmasking a first in Singapore, this exhibition will highlight works by award winning artists Shane Pickett and Kathleen Petyarre as well as Abie Loy, Lindsay Harris and the many gems pulled from the best Aboriginal community centre’s, private collections, estates of deceased artists and other ethical sources.

Australian Indigenous art has become a global phenomenon, intriguing the public with its evolving and changing faces and styles. When contemplating Aboriginal art, we recognize an entire genre driven by a nomadic way of life replete with watering holes and an ancient form of communicating. The meaning behind the beautiful and sometimes-colourful works is not always immediately apparent in traditional Aboriginal artwork and this nuance is even more pronounced in some of the more stunning contemporary pieces in this show.

Notably, each remains firmly rooted in tradition, political and social expression and country while retaining the integrity and connection with an ancient past shrouded in tribal beliefs and law.

The show affords the premium of modern Aboriginal art to Singaporean Collectors.

One of Australia’s most exciting and collectable contemporary artists, Sally Gabori, gets first solo show in Singapore at the Australian High Commission, Singapore.

In 2005 an elderly Kaiadilt woman, living in one of Australia’s most remote communities, took the art world by surprise. Aged 80, Sally Gabori, wandered into the Mornington Island Arts and Crafts centre, picked up a brush and a new movement of art began.

Contemporary, vivid and saturated with the colours of the tropics one could be forgiven for not recognising this as indigenous art but it’s a departure that has collectors taking notice.

The international response to Sally’s work has been enormous and with shows in Australia, UK, South Korea, middle East and the US she has won over curators, galleries and major collectors alike. April will mark her first show at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) so it seems fitting to prepare for that with this beautiful collection of bright and meaningful recent works.

In “50 of Australia’s Most Collectable Artists" published by the prestigious Art Collector Magazine, Sally was listed in 2009, 2010 and again this year in 2011.

Her art is a visual record of a nation’s life and landscapes but sadly Sally and her community were forced to leave their land more than 50 years ago. In 1948, following a natural disaster, they were evacuated from their home in Bentink Island to Mornington Island, an experience so traumatic that for years no babies were born. Today fewer than ten people can speak their original language but in the images of waterholes, fishing traps, reefs, rocks and shells we can see a land and life lost to its people but reclaimed through their art.

Her abstract paintings bursting with vivid colour may be inspired by the landscape of her ancient homeland but the look is modern, bold and quite simply beautiful.

It is little wonder these powerful works have been collected by The National Gallery of Victoria, Edith Cowan University, the Chartwell, Merenda, Lagerberg-Swift and Marshall Collections, Leeuwin Estate, Harding Family and the Musee du Quai Branly.

Importantly, the success of this collectable work helps a community retain its identity and generates a vital economy providing much needed education, support and infrastructure.

ReDot Fine Art Gallery in collaboration with the Australian High Commission is proud to present this landmark solo exhibition which will be held at The Australian High Commission.

Admission is between 8:30am and 4:30pm, daily (Monday to Friday) and you will need an official form of identification to enter the premises. Guided tours can be arranged by contact ReDot Fine Art Gallery on info@redotgallery.com.

ReDot Fine Art Gallery is proud to welcome a very special exhibition of barkcloth art from the Ömie artists of Mount Lamington in Oro province, Papua New Guinea.

An artistically groundbreaking event for ReDot Fine Art Gallery, this exhibition has allowed us to extend our sights to include work which looks beyond contemporary Indigenous Australian art, and to indigenous art in the broader Australasian region. This exhibition is a major coup for the lion city, it is only the fourth ever exhibition of art from the Ömie artists, and the first ever outside of Australian shores. We are privileged to be able to bring these tribal customs to Singapore and allow all Singaporean’s a rare, personalised, insight into this ancient, yet dynamic and blossoming artistic movement.

Powerfully tactile, the barkcloths or nyog’e which feature in this exhibition, No si hijomiono’o jabesi soré jajivo - (We are painting the designs of our ancestors), are made from thin veils of beaten paper mulberry tree bark, which are then painted in an earthy palette of colour made from bush dyes. Traditional customs, dating back many centuries are still used today, as 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 clothing.

Created by senior Ömie tribeswomen, the nyog’e are the outcome of a long period of apprenticeship. Females within their respective marital and birth clans learn the techniques and customs which lead to the production of these beautifully crafted, spiritually routed artworks. The practice of making barkcloths originated from the time of the ancestors. Their creation story tells of how Mina, the first man, instructed Suja, the first woman, to beat and dye the first barkcloth. For centuries Ömie women have been painting designs onto barkcloth, however, many of the designs are also derived from the ujawe, the somewhat painful Ömie initiation rite involving the tattooing of clan insignia onto skin. Contact with Christian missionaries in the mid twentieth century heralded a cultural shift in Ömie practices, and contributed to the transference of these designs from the skin and onto the barkcloth. Now, particularly when worn as clothing, the nyog’e forms a sort of ‘double skin’, which constitutes something of an artistic armoury for the retention of traditional Ömie knowledge and cultural practice.

Place, art and culture are all synonymous for the Ömie. The creation of the nyog’e is an affirmation of culture and an essential reminder of the power of nature over human life. The Ömie villages sit precariously on the steep slopes of the volcanic Mt Lamington, and so a reverence and respect for nature in all its might has evolved as an intrinsic part of these people’s lives throughout the ages. Artwork which palpably speaks to us about maintaining deference for the natural world seems to be a highly pertinent sentiment, irrespective of where in the world we live.

One of the most unexplored and untouched regions in the world, there is an exceptionally diverse range of traditional cultures which remain very much living as they always have. Both Singapore’s and Australia’s proximity to the Pacific and Papua New Guinea has generated growing inquisitiveness and interest in researching and collecting Oceanic art.

To this end, this first ever Singaporean, and international, exhibition of Ömie barkcloth serves to give insight to the visual cultures from the Australasian and Pacific regions, providing an international platform for the Ömie people, to whom producing these artworks is a means to cultural, social, political and economic empowerment. The crucial income generated by these stunning artworks contributes to the development of sustainable infrastructure in the region, such as schools and medical care. Like many Melanesian tribal cultures, the Ömie have highly complex social and religious beliefs steeped in tradition, but they are also dynamic and responsive to the growing need for cultural and artistic conversations with the world outside of their tiny, remote villages.

We are thrilled to welcome these works into our gallery.

Come and join us at ReDot Fine Art Gallery for some mulled wine and festive cheer as we celebrate the holiday season and the opening of our annual Stockroom exhibition of affordable artworks by artists from many different art centres within Australia. A perfect opportunity to beat the retail madness, and to find a gift for that special someone, or yourself. Whatever your budget or taste in art, you are sure to find something that will make for a memorable, long lasting present which will stand out from the usual soaps-and-socks gifts under the tree.

We will have some engaging works by Jean Yaritji Lane who uses her paintings to tell the story of the Seven Sisters using a beautiful contrast of colours. Or perhaps you might be captured by the truly exquisite artworks from award winning and senior Walmajarri artist, Wakartu Cory Surprise. We also have some stunning woven baskets by Nancy Taylor, from the Martumili community that would make for the perfect centrepiece in anyone’s home.

We hope to see you on Tuesday 7th December, from 12-7pm, for a nice glass of wine and tasty seasonal treats!

The exhibition will remain up until Saturday 18th December, when we will finally take a WELL deserved break and see you all fresh and ready for an exciting 2011, full of great shows and exciting new works.

The ReDot Fine Art Gallery is proud to welcome back the beautiful works of Australia’s foremost Aboriginal art community, Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd, in what will be the 7th showing in Singapore of the stunning works of the desert masters.

Ngurra Kutju Ngurrara - Belonging to One Country, is the most ambitious show to date and has taken over 12 months to curate as we attempted to bring new styles, repeated dreamtime and more cultural understanding of the Luritja/Pintupi people of the Central and Western Deserts of Australia. It will showcase some of the most important recent works of some of Papunya’s most established artists, a collection of older defining works by deceased or no-longer painting artists alongside canvases from some of the art centres newest and brightest talents.

Papunya a settlement located 240 northwest of Alice Springs, in Australia’s Northern Territory, is considered the birthplace of the contemporary aboriginal art movement. In 1971 school teacher Geoffrey Bardon encouraged some of the men to paint a blank school wall. The murals sparked off tremendous interest in the community and soon many men started painting, the rest as one says is history!

In 1972 the artists successfully established their own company, entirely owned and directed by traditional Aboriginal people and it currently has 49 shareholders and represents around 120 artists living in the communities of Kintore and Kiwirrkura, making it the most successful Aboriginal owned enterprise in the country, a testament to the commitment and drive of the artists and the management of the cooperative.

The Papunya Tula painting style derives directly from the artists’ knowledge of traditional body and sand painting associated with ceremony. The initial designs were very simple and iconographic but they soon became more complex and today they are highly regarded, being the most collectable group of artists in contemporary Australian art.

In this exhibition works by ALL 4 of this year’s Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award finalists from Papunya Tula are on show: George TJUNGURRAYI, Yukultji NAPANGATI, Johnny TJUPURRULA YUNGUT & Nyilyari TJAPANGATI. Other heavy-weights will also be on show in this collection of over 30 works in what has become the ReDot Fine Art Gallery seminal annual show.

The exhibition opens on Thursday 21st October and runs till Friday 3rd December 2010 and it is a must see for anyone interested in following the “songlines” of one of the art movements most important centers.

The show will be opened by Mr. Paul Sweeney, Art Centre Manager for the Papunya Tula Artists, and will include the only body of work shown in 2010 of canvases by renowned artist Makinti NAPANAGKA and the only exhibited work in 2010 of deceased artist Mrs. REID NAKAMARRA, along with one or two other surprises!

In 2008 and 2009 Alma Nungarrayi Granites’s work featured in two exhibitions at the ReDot Fine Art Gallery in Singapore to much critical and commercial acclaim, which kicked off the career of a new generation of Aboriginal painter.

In September she will have her 1st solo exhibition ever, hot on the heels of her Australian artist-in-residence at the Shanghai World Expo in August.

“Yanjirlpirri Mungangka - Under the Night Sky”, is in recognition of her growing reputation as an artist and in reaction to strong public demand for her work and will be hosted in Singapore, to coincide with her ‘artist in residency’ at ReDot Fine Art Gallery.

Nungarrayi paints for the Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Cooperation which operates from a small gallery and workshop in the heart of Yuendumu – a township on Aboriginal land 300 dusty kilometres from Alice Springs in central Australia.

Warlukurlangu is a Warlpiri word meaning “belonging to fire” and is also the name of an important ceremonial and sacred site a few kilometres west of Yuendumu.

For more than three decades Warlukurlangu has exported the artistic wonders of central Australia to lovers of fine Aboriginal art across the world.

Warlukurlangu was established as an artist’s collective in 1985 to represent the interests of hundreds of Australian Aboriginal artists from the Warlpiri and Anmatyerr language groups at Yuendumu and surrounding homelands and communities.

Warlukurlangu is a not-for-profit, locally owned and controlled independent association with more than 600 members, most of whom are practising artists.

It is directed by an Executive Committee composed of representatives from each of the sixteen (eight for men, eight for women) kinship groupings that provide the fundamental philosophical and religious underpinnings of local culture and traditions.

Nungarrayi’s artworks, and the arts practices that govern their production, form a bridge between the richness and vitality of the world’s oldest living culture and the modern reality of life in one of the most remote and chronically disadvantaged townships in outback Australia.

She represents every one of her fellow Aboriginal people and carries the story of her people to foreign shores with passion and thoughtfulness.

Ms.

Gloria Morales and Alma will be attending the opening of this show and will be available for interviews and discussions.

Over the last 6 years ReDot Fine Art Gallery has pursued a focused and determined goal of bringing the most important and modern Australian Indigenous art to the shores of Singapore, educating the public of this vibrant and fast evolving art movement.

To begin with our focus has been on canvases from the Central and Western Desert co-operative art centres.

But Indigenous Australia is a diverse tapestry of many ’nations’, environments, languages and art styles which is also reflected in the Australian contemporary fine art world.

All major Institutional, and most serious private collections, include work in natural media from the Top End in addition to the more common acrylic on canvas from the desert.

Barks, sculpture and larrakitj (memorial poles) from Arnhem land communities regularly attract critical and commercial acclaim as exciting contemporary art.

With this in mind, in late July and August we are pleased to announce the 1st ever exhibition of poles and barks from the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Art Centre.

Yirrkala, as it is better known, is acknowledged as one of the top three community-owned art centres in Australia and has won twelve prizes in the last fifteen Telstra Art Awards.

The recent Sydney Biennale featured the 110 memorial poles owned by the Kerry Stokes Collection.

It is a small Aboriginal community on the north-eastern tip of the top end of the Northern Territory, approximately 700km east of Darwin.

Buku-Larrnggay means the feeling on your face as it is struck by the first rays of the sun - Miwatj or the Sunrise country.

Fittingly, ‘Returning to Djakapurra’ – A Collection of Yirrkala Poles and Barks 2010, will mark the rising of this established and award winning art centre by showcasing 19 magnificent poles from this coastal refuge and 27 exquisitely handcrafted ochre barks from established and emerging Yolngu people.

Intricate works in classical geometric designs, mesmerizing the viewer and attracting them into the history and life of these proud and determined people.

There has been an indigenous community at Yirrkala throughout recorded history, but the community increased enormously in size when the Yirrkala mission was founded in 1935.

The art centre was established formally in 1975, though one can track back to the 1960s Narritjin Maymuru setting up his own beachfront gallery from which he sold art that now graces many major museums and private collections.

His vision of a Yolngu-owned business to sell Yolngu art that started with a shelter on a beach has now grown into a thriving business that will this year see Yirrkala showcase in Singapore and also exhibit at the Shanghai EXPO, an impressive contrast to the humble beginnings of the beachfront gallery! ’Djakapurra’ according to the Yolngu Dictionary was the Yolngu interpretation of the name given to Singapore by Macassan traders who had visited the North Australian coast for hundreds of years prior to European settlement.

It is well known that Yolngu accompanied Macassans to their Sulawesi home base and it appears that they had in fact visited Singapore before.

So in 2010 that link will be re-opened by this show and we are excited to be making the re-connection between this remote part of Australia and the Lion City.

The show will be attended by Wukun WANAMBI and Will Stubbs, as they add a special touch to the event and share their stories of living in remote Aboriginal communities and maintaining and protecting a precious culture to the Singapore public.

The show also features works by Gulumbu YUNUPINGU, Wolpa WANAMBI, Djirrirra WUNUNMURRA, Garawan WANAMBI, Barrupu YUNUPINGU, Barayuwa MUNUNGGURR and Dhurrumuwuy MARIKA.