UQ’s evolving collection of Indigenous art will be on show from this Saturday as curtains close on NAIDOC Week 2011.
Painting Country explores an array of approaches and styles characteristic of Indigenous art and features several new acquisitions donated to the University.
“Representation of Indigenous artists in the collection was boosted in 2010 by several gifts, including artworks donated by Christopher Thomas and Mark Alexander, and Patrick Corrigan AM,” UQ Art Museum Campbell Gray said.
“The paintings reveal the artists’ enduring relationship with their homeland, and ongoing engagement with their culture and Country through art.”
Works by Donald Moko, Margaret Baragurra and Rusty Peters from Western Australia will be shown along with paintings by Desert artists Kathleen Petyarre, Lorna Napanangka and Elizabeth Marks Nakamarra. Queensland artist Dennis Nona from the Torres Strait is also represented.
“Regional differences are determined in part by the stories and iconographies specific to each place, passed down through generations,” Associate Curator Samantha Littley said.
“While these qualities may help distinguish the paintings of artists from particular regions, diversity exists within these conventions, with artists bringing their own experiences and individual aesthetic to their work.”
Ms Littley said several of the artists had moved away from their place of birth either by choice or as the result of intervention.
“Sisters Paula Paul and Netta Loogatha were relocated with their community from Bentinck Island to Mornington Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria in the 1940s, after a series of natural disasters and at the insistence of Methodist missionaries,” Ms Littley said.
“The women fought for, and eventually won, rights to their homeland, and now live and paint there during the dry season.
“In every instance, the artists included in Painting Country create work that connects to their Country, and keeps their culture strong.”
An official opening will be held on Friday, August 12, and coincides with the opening of several other exhibitions including John Conomos: Shipwreck and Story Bridge, Dennis Del Favero: Todtnauberg, and the National Portrait Gallery travelling exhibition Inner Worlds: Portraits & psychology.
Painting Country continues until September 18. The UQ Art Museum is open free to the public from 10am–4pm seven days a week.
Media: Gordon Craig at UQ Art Museum (07 3346 8762, g.craig@uq.edu.au)
