Indigenous Art of the Kimberley > New Energy: Mananambarra
On the white walls of the gallery the large paintings of Wandjina by senior Kimberley artist Omborrin beam forth filling the room with the radiance of his beloved Kimberley homelands.
People involved in the arts and education might have difficulty recognising the Australia that the Treasurer has been talking up recently: the one with the record 4% low unemployment. But the Treasurers spin fails to mention that to be counted as employed you only have to work one hour per week, which bears out the reality of a life in the arts.
James Lynch. Sean Meilak. Viv Miller. Jonathan Nichols. Lisa Radford. Michelle Ussher Curated by Jan Duffy and Kate Barber Linden - St Kilda Centre for Contemporary Arts 8 July - 13 August 2006
Robert Owens longstanding interest in exploring dimensions of light and space beyond the merely visual reaches back into an important line of constructivist art of the early twentieth century. Experiments with form and material have characterised Owens practice throughout his career, as has his openness to heterogeneous influences. Some of the major influences on Owens practice include metaphysical philosophy, Buddhist spirituality, optics, geometry in physics, minimalist sculpture and the work of Marcel Duchamp. This article refers to the works of Naum Gabo, De Stijl, Russian Constructivism, Bauhaus, Lynden Dadswell, Walter Gropius, Chairman Clift, George Johnston, Leonard Cohen, Jack Hirshman, Jean-François Lyotard, Charles Biederman, David Bohm and Stephen Hyde.
Renate Nisi is obsessed by being packaged in a body, that condition common to humans, other animals, plants and even microbes. Growing up in Germany, where 'art had epic qualities', she flirted with the Sublime and the Romantic but converted to Expressionism 'with the figure as central motif.' A further shift has occurred since then, towards minimalism and three-dimensionality, 'away from the sovereignty of forms onto the relational qualities of environments.'
This January, in the startlingly beautiful country of the Warmun Community, rained in by a particularly intense wet season, art matriarch and grandmother of eighteen, Mabel Juli, sat on the veranda of the Ngalangpum School looking through some of the old paintings which comprise the Warmun Community Collection.