Exhibitions

ReDot Fine Art Gallery is extremely honoured to be hosting the first ever solo show of paintings in Singapore for Australian artist Victoria Cattoni, who originates from Ingham, in the tropics of north Queensland.

Pinturas marks the first major body of paintings to be exhibited by the artist in over 20 years, in a career which spans back to 1988 when Victoria did her first solo show at Dick Bett Gallery (now Bett Gallery) in Hobart, the year after graduating from her Arts Degree.

Over the subsequent 25 years or so the majority of her artistic output has been expressed through the medium of videos, installation and/or performance art, exhibiting extensively throughout Asia, where Victoria travelled, settled and continues to work. It was not until 2011 that she suddenly decided to return to her roots and the more intimate medium of canvas paintings. Commenting on the change in 2011, she says:

"The return to painting was a sudden urge – I literally woke one morning and wondered where my oil paints were (which country!) and wanted very much to put paint on canvas. This may seem a rather wide leap from my art practice of the past twenty years – installation, video, performance art - but whose creative path is linear? The urge to paint again, I feel, came from a desire to touch and fashion something with my hands and body; it was perhaps an antidote, and a salve to the digital screen."

This decision led to her first trip to Portugal, where she spent six weeks at Obras, an arts residency set in the landscape of the Alentejo region, east of Lisbon. She has returned twice to the same residency since and the body of work on exhibition is a collection from these and other residencies over the last 5 years. Whilst Victoria maintains that she never stopped painting, it certainly took a background role to her other practice and she has rarely exhibited this medium until today.

Her work follows no prescribed rules, there is no plan and she has no idea of what the painting will be; she tries to set up conditions so that she can enter a space in which she can move between playful abandon and intense consideration. There is a need to touch and feel and work and move about with colour and tools and music; to create surprising paintings that both she and the viewer can wander through and over and get lost in.

The results can be perceived as captured frames of fuzzy stories in which certain impulses are sensuously ‘netted’ and rendered onto a surface with paint. It is a ‘scape’ of love, loss, colour, beauty, problem solving, wandering, and a lull, leaving the mind behind, even for just seconds at a time.

The exhibition begins on Wednesday 21st October and runs until Saturday 21st November 2015 and will be attended in person by Victoria Cattoni to share this beautiful body of new works.

ReDot Fine Art Gallery is extremely honoured to be hosting the first ever solo show for Eva, a Walmajarri woman born on Christmas Creek Station in early 1958. During her early years she shifted between several Stations as she followed her parents, her father being a stockman and her mother a home helper.

After completing her schooling in Derby, Eva returned to Christmas Creek to become a teacher and it was here in 1984 that she met her husband and married. Eva believes in big families and has nine children and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Indeed, so busy was she kept by her family that Eva was a very late-comer to the world of art as she waited until her children were grown up.

Eva paints her Grandmother’s country and the laws that she was taught by her. She paints her style of seasons and bush tucker inspired by her childhood memories of winter rains and the cold weather; an unusual departure from the normal dreamtime interpretations of many of her fellow Mangkaja Art Resource Agency artists.

PAINTED SEASONS: Times for Hunting and Food Gathering, is a collection of 15 major works on canvas by Eva, the largest body of work that has ever been amassed in one show over a period of almost two years. Her work is in such demand that it normally sells before ever leaving the art centre studio, usually to travelling collectors or enthusiasts who fall in love, whilst visiting the community in Fitzroy Crossing, with her intricate interpretations of the seasonal changes in the North Western deserts.

Remarking on her work, art coordinator Wes Maselli says of her work:

"Individuation and total distraction. I’ve never known a mother to look after so many kids, 9 of her own by birth, but many more. Managing this many kids can be chaotic, yet Eva manages them with a fine, positive rhythm. I imagine if she is not attending to kids, Eva is painting and vice versa. Likewise, each painted line a trill-voiced placation, each painting a lullaby."

The exhibition begins on Wednesday 16th September and runs until Saturday 17th October 2015 and will be attended in person by Eva and her husband, in what will be their first ever trip to Singapore. A must-see show for anyone interested in following the recent developments in Indigenous Art and an opportunity to meet a beautiful and talented proponent of one of the world’s oldest art forms.

ReDot Fine Art Gallery is honored to host Ninuku Tjuta, a follow up exhibition from the sell-out show by Ninuku Arts in 2012 and 2013. 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 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 other pretenders to their throne. 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.

The exhibition begins on Wednesday 16th September and runs until Saturday 17th October 2015, in conjunction with our Eva Nargoodah solo show from Mangkaja Arts. A must-see show for anyone interested in following the recent developments in Indigenous Art and an opportunity to meet a beautiful and talented proponent of one of the world’s oldest art forms.

ReDot Fine Art Gallery is extremely honoured to be inaugurating our stunning new space at the Old Hill Street Police Station with an equally stunning solo exhibition of works by the hugely talented Imelda Yukenbarri Gugaman. Coming from a rich family of artists, she is the eldest daughter of the highly acclaimed and accomplished painter Lucy Yukenbarri (deceased) and the world renowned Helicopter Tjungarrayi - not only a highly collectable artist in his own right, but famous for his exploits as a child when found almost starving in the desert by patrol workers, and one of the most senior law-men of the Northern-Central Deserts of Australia.

Imelda grew up a quiet and shy girl living in the dormitories at the Balgo Mission for a number of years, looked after by the nuns and she retains fond memories of this time along with a very strong sense of religion and family values. After attending the government school at Balgo until 1969, Imelda lived for a while in Beagle Bay where she met her husband. They started a family and after their second child they moved back to Balgo where they had 2 more children before his passing.

Imelda spent a lot of time with her mother when she was young and every weekend would paint alongside her, learning her Tjukurpa (dreamtime) and the ways of Indigenous culture. Her mother would explain the importance of passing on the stories they were painting and instilled into Imelda the need to pass them onto her children, and grandchildren, which she continues to do.

Despite the pressure of living up to very accomplished artists within her family, Imelda has proudly carried on the legacy of the painting style and stories of her mother, to which this body of work attests, yet has found a very appealing and unique style of her own in the process.

Winpurpurla, the place that Imelda calls “home”, is the first ever solo show for this talented artist. The works are an amazing affirmation of her painterly pointillism style, allowing the viewer into a very remote landscape of Indigenous Australia, creating meandering, three dimensional topographical maps of the soakage waterhole sites of her beloved country.

Imelda has travelled around Australia and overseas with her art, and recently travelled to Melbourne to attend the opening of “Warlayirti: The Art of Balgo” and dance with other Balgo artists at the National Gallery of Victoria in St Kilda. She was also one of the artists who travelled to Tokyo, Japan in 2010 for one of Warlayirti’s largest ever shows.

The exhibition begins on Wednesday, 5th August and runs until Saturday, 12th September 2015 and will be attended in person by Imelda, in what will be her first ever trip to Singapore. A must-see show for anyone interested in following the recent developments in Indigenous Art and an opportunity to meet a beautiful and talented proponent of one of the world’s oldest art forms.

ReDot Fine Art Gallery is honoured and excited to be able to release a stunning new body of works from the heart of the Modern Contemporary Indigenous Art movement. Tjungu Palya is an artist-run art centre, in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in the far north west of South Australia and we will be re-opening our doors at our new site in the Old Hill Street Police Station with this stunning collection.

With many of their artists being ‘first contact’ bush people, they retain strong cultural knowledge and a willingness to share what is appropriate to people of other cultures. Promoting traditional arts practices while also encouraging new forms of artistic expression in the re-telling of the Tjukurpa (‘Dreaming’ - Law), the stories virtually leap off each canvas, begging the viewer to look more deeply for meaning and consequence.

We will be hosting the first solo collaboration for three of their most collectable and exciting artists, in a show simply titled, Mangkurpa (3). Maureen Baker, Beryl Jimmy and Tjampawa Stevens will for the first time come together to explore their sacred stories in their own very unique yet complimentary styles.

As children, these now senior Tjungu Palya artists lived a traditional nomadic life travelling in small family groups. Their traditional lifestyle continued until the 1930s, when desert people were migrated to Ernabella and Warburton missions, initially as a result of the assimilation policy of the day but also due to terrible drought and the atomic testing at Maralinga.

The desire to return to their own country remained critical to the community elders throughout this time, and by the 1960s families began returning to their lands and establishing small remote settlements. In spite of the interruption, the extreme remoteness of this area and the continued connection to the land has contributed to the maintenance of an Indigenous lifestyle rich in ceremonies and traditional observances.

Tjungu Palya artists have powerful spiritual links to their country, and produce paintings that are exuberant and have highly individual compositions depicting their myth cycles embedded in the topography of the land. Join us to be mesmerised by this latest journey through the Australian outback as we look at works by highly collectable master of the Modern Indigenous Art movement. Artists who are carrying the torch of this art movement forward with vigor and positive expectations despite the challenging times that lie ahead for these nomadic, cultural warriors!

The exhibition begins on Wednesday, 17th June and runs until Saturday, 1st August 2015 by appointment only. It is a must-see for anyone interested in following the recent developments of Indigenous art in Australia.

KALTJITI ARTS is located in Fregon, a remote community approximately thirty kilometres south of the majestic Musgrave Ranges of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands (APY Lands) in the far north west of South Australia. The nearest regional centre is Alice Springs, 500 km to the north. Uluru is 350 km west.

The settlement in Fregon began as an outstation of the Ernabella mission in 1961. It was set up to provide additional employment for men by establishing a cattle station. The Anangu women who moved from Ernabella to Fregon, brought their art and craft skills with them. These included making moccasins from kangaroo leather, spinning sheep’s wool, making hooked rugs and weaving. Batik was introduced in the early 1970’s and painting in the late 1990’s.

The families of Kathy Marinkga and Matjangka Norris were part of this early settlement. As soon as young girls left school, they went to work at the ‘Ernabella-Fregon’ craft centre now known as Kaltjiti Arts. Over the years Kathy and Matjangka have continued to work in diverse mediums including making punu – wood carvings, tie dyeing T-shirts, painting on silk, screen prints, lino prints, etchings and painting.

Artists from Fregon have individual and unique styles. Initially, most artists were younger women or were from traditional country that was men’s business, and they did not paint tjukurpa. Instead, the women developed imagery which was based on the landscape and storytelling of everyday life called milpatjunanyi.

These intuitive, spontaneous images developed into colourful and complex works. The academic description of “meaningful marks or patterns” became the distinctive style known as walka. Originally used on weavings, these were transferred to all other mediums in particular batik and painting.

The contemporary, abstract interpretation of the landscape, environment and culture by Kathy Maringka and Matjangka Norris reflects their aboriginal heritage and response to traditional country and culture in the paintings exhibited in Katu munu Tjaru - Above and Below: of Sky and Land

Kaltjiti Art Centre is an artist owned enterprise. The members are anangu from the local Kaltjiti Community. A seven member Anangu artist board of management oversees the primary function of the art centre which is to support its artist members with the production and marketing of their art. Expression of story through art promotes cultural maintenance, artistic, social, and economic development.

In a remote area, employment is scarce and the art centre plays a vital economic role.

Authenticity and provenance for the artwork is guaranteed by the art centre.

Art Stage Singapore is the leading Asian art fair connecting the world to the best of Asian contemporary art. With a deep understanding of Asia’s dynamic visual arts scene, Art Stage Singapore presents the diversity of contemporary art rising from the region. At the crossroads among Southeast Asia, China, India, the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand, Art Stage Singapore is the flagship cultural event of the region and the place to experience Asian Contemporary Art at its best, as well as a top global marketplace, attracting the world’s most influential private art collectors, corporate buyers and VIPs.

ReDot Fine Art Gallery, in collaboration with Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd will be showcasing some of the most collectable art to emerge from the Australian Central Deserts over the past 20 years.

ReDot Fine Art Gallery proudly invites you to an exhibition of exceptional 3D works from two of Australia’s foremost Aboriginal owned art centres, Ernabella Arts (Inc.) and Yarrenyty-Arltere Artists, in what will represent the first ever showing of ceramic and soft sculptural works in Singapore.

We will be hosting a dual exhibition, showcasing the sublime talents of the ceramic artists of Ernabella alongside the quirky and iconic soft sculptures of the artists of Yarrenyty-Arltere in a show with a double title, We Just Keep on Travelling Further and Ngura Kutjupa, Tjukurpa Kutju/Different Country, One Story.

Ceramic works for the show will be created in Singapore during a residency at the Dragon Kiln Studios in Thow Kwang during the month of October and the exhibition will coincide and be part of the Awaken the Dragon festival which opens on the 17th of November.

The first exhibition of pottery from Ernabella were works made in Adelaide, at the JamFactory and after six or so years of working with them Ernabella were able to set up their own studio, converting an old screen-printing room in 2003. Since then the practice of ceramic making has gone from strength to strength culminating in a widely acclaimed residency in China in 2013, when two artists travelled to Jingdezhen, yielding several award winning creations and further cemented the reputation of this deeply rooted community of the central Australian desert.

Yarrenyty-Arltere Artists is part of the Yarrenyty-Arltere Learning Centre (YALC), a family resource and learning facility located at Larapinta Valley Town Camp in Alice Springs. The centre aims to improve the social, health, environmental and economic well-being of the community in a way that strengthens and respects culture. The centre was initiated by the community in 2000 to respond to the very serious social problems being faced by families. The art centre has become an integral part of the centre producing some of the most highly sought after and beautifully created soft sculptures from recycled woollen blankets and other materials. The work is strongly underpinned by its own culture, that of people living in town camps for a number of generations. It speaks of country, local flora and fauna, family, cattle station and town camp life whilst also becoming highly collectable and sweeping many national art prizes as collectors and national institutions battle to acquire these whimsical delights.

The exhibition opens on Wednesday, 19th November and runs till Saturday, 31st January 2015 and it is a must-see for anyone interested in hand made beautiful Indigenous 3D works of art in two opposing mediums yet harmonious in their joint connect to Indigenous ancestral heritage.