Michael Nelson Tjakamarra

Aboriginal Painting by Michael Nelson Tjakamarra

2014

Judy Watson Napangardi was born around 1935 at Yarungkanji, Mt. Doreen Station, at the time when many Warlpiri and other Central and Western Desert Peoples were living a traditional ...

Kathleen (or Kweyetwemp in her Eastern Anmatyerre tongue) Petyarre was born c. 1940 at Atnangkere on Utopia Station, 270km north east of Alice Springs. She first encountered white man in the late 1940s and starting her integration into western society when working on various pastoral leases as she grew up. In 1969 she was successful in applying for a job at Utopia school where she stayed for 20 years. During that time she worked on batik, and then started painting as part of CAAMA's Summer Project in 1988-89. In 1996 Kathleen won the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA) and her painting career blossomed from there. She has been exhibited overseas numerous times and in 2001 had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. In general, her work is minimalistic and characterised by the fine dotting technique she uses to represent mental maps of her country. Her signature work is the Mountain or Thorny Devil Lizard Dreaming, which gives a unique representation of this small creature's travels across Kathleen's country during the Creation era. Another signature genre is Bush Seeds. Kathleen Petyarre is a blood sister of the respected artists Gloria, Violet and Ada Bird Petyarre, a great niece of the feted Emily Kame Kngwarreye and skin sister to Jeannie and Rosemary Petyarre. She is extensively exhibited in public and private galleries. Kathleen spent her time between Alice Springs and her home country, Utopia. Dr Christine Nicholls reported that Kathleen passed away on 24 November 2018 in Alice Springs, surrounded by family and loved ones, at about the age of 80. Awards and Recognition 2002 Top...

Yannima Tommy Watson is a Pitjantjatjara artist born around the 1930s, in the bush some 44km west of the small isolated community of Irrunytju. Not yet very well known to the French public, despite his participation in the architectural project of the Musée du Quai Branly, Tommy Watson is nevertheless often considered the greatest living Aboriginal artist. Like many aborigines of his generation, he lived a traditional, nomadic or semi-nomadic life before his contact with Western civilization; then he will occupy the only jobs that the Aborigines find: herdsmen (until Yuendumu), laborers for the construction of infrastructures in the desert. Throughout this period he became familiar with his "country", a harsh region, and deepened his knowledge, both profane and sacred, relating to Dreams and Dreamtimes, to the connections between sacred sites and the Ancestors. He will even work in Papunya, where the artistic movement started. But the Pijantjarra are intransigent with tradition…no question at this time of revealing the motives and the secret stories. The North of South Australia, the region where he is from, was touched by the pictorial movement only at the very beginning of the 2000s. In 2001, Tommy began his career as an artist in Irrunytju (Wingellina). He is a young artist… He learns by observing other painters and draws on the experiences of a long life and on the exceptional knowledge he has stored up. But quickly he will find his way, a radically new style where color plays a major role. Very quickly, the iconography now well known by the artists of Yuendumu, or the Western Desert, Balgo or Lajamanu disappeared. The symbols are no longer there. As Rover Thomas...

George Ward Tjungurrayi was born near Kiwirrkura. It was only in his teenage years that he first encountered Europeans, when a commonwealth wel...

Paddy Japaljarri Stewart came from Mungapunju in Australia, just south of Yuendumu in the Northern Territory. As a young man he worked on cattle properties at Mount Allen, Mount Denn...

Paddy Japaljarri Sims was born in about 1917 at Kunajarray (Mt Nicker), south-west of Yuendumu at a site where a number of Dreaming tracks interconnect. When he died in 2010 in Yuendumu. He left behind his wife Bessie Nakamarra, his seven children and many grandchildren and great grandchildren. Paddy sometimes worked in collaboration with his wife, who was an acclaimed artist in her own right. His wife lived in Yuendumu, a remote Aboriginal community 290 km north-west of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia. She died in 2012. Paddy lived in his country as a young, single man. Back then Warlpiri people wore hair string belts that they had made. When Japaljarri was young he worked sawing mulga trees for wood and for fuel for fires. Later Paddy became involved with gardening and farming in the Yuendumu district. This included growing watermelons, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes and other vegetables. The farming was at Four Mile Bore where they had chickens, pigs, ducks and other animals. All his life he hunted for goanna, kangaroo, emu and other animals each day for bush tucker and Paddy passed on his hunting knowledge to many young men in the community. This also led him to working at the Yuendumu school teaching Jukurrpa (Dreaming), painting, hunting, traditional dancing, bush tucker and helping out on excursions 'out bush' as well as to Alice Springs and Darwin. Paddy Painted with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre, for a long time. In 1988 Paddy Sims was selected by The Power Gallery, Sydney University to travel to Paris with five other Warlpiri men from Yuendumu to create a ground painting installation at the exhibition 'Magiciens de la Terre' at the Centre Georges Pompidou. The trip took place in May 1989 and the painting was received with world-wide acclaim. Paddy was also one of the senior male artists who worked on the Yuendumu Doors. In 2000 Paddy Japaljarri Stewart undertook to produce 30 etchings of the original Yuendumu Doors in collaboration with Paddy Japaljarri Sims and under the guidance of Basil Hall, Northern Editions Printmaker (Northern Territory University). The first print of the etchings was all on one page and had its debut alongside the Yuendumu Doors when they were exhibited in Alice Springs. The etchings in a set were launched in 2001, to great acclaim with the set winning the Telstra, 16th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, for works on paper. Paddy has painted and exhibited regularly with Warlukurlangu Artists both nationally and internationally since 1985. Japaljarri's Jukurrpa stories or Dreamings include Yiwarra (Milky Way), Ngarlkirdi/Warna (witchety grub/snake), Warlu Kukurrpa (fire), and Yanjirlpirri (star). In his early work he often chose to work in tones of blue, pink and purple but later used traditional iconography and an unrestricted palette to develop a modern individualist style to depict his traditional Jukurrpa. His work has been included in numerous general exhibitions of Aboriginal art including Dreaming: The Art of Aboriginal Australia, The Asia Society Galleries, New York, 1988; The Continuing Tradition, Australian National Gallery, Canberra, 1989; Mythscapes: Aboriginal Art of the Desert...

Maureen’s work excites the eye as it elicits a sense of movement and vibrating patterns through her subtle shifts in colour and intricately dot-painted diamond shaped designs. She us...

Biddy Long is a traditional woman bringing years of bush living and travelling to her painting. Her early life was with other Warlpiri on Mt Doreen cattle station when her family was...

In Between Words 2', from the series 'Horizons’ 2021 Handwoven painting, linen, cotton yarn, acrylic textile paint, 65 x 50 cm. ‘Horizons’ are a symbiosis of two disciplines of art,...

‘Horizon. Cabo Sardão’ 2020 Handwoven painting, linen, woollen, silk, cotton yarn, acrylic textile paint, 130 x 65 cm Handwoven painting from the series ‘Horizons’, based on a portuguese landscape...

"Timeless", from the series Horizons, handwoven painting, linen yarn, acrylic textile paint, 60 x 80 cm, 2022. Canvas is entirely constructed on a weaving loom...

In Between Words III, 2021, Horizons Series Handwoven painting, linen, cotton yarn, acrylic textile paint, 65 x 50 cm ‘Horizons’ are a symbiosis of two disciplines of art, Painting and Weaving. Handwoven Canvas is entirely constructed on a weaving loom using a painting technique of glazing - applying semi-transparent layers of textile on each other' Inspiration is the colour perspective which exists in nature and the line of the horizon – border of the space visible to the eye and the one hidden by the ground. Marta Pokojowczyk...