Rosella Namok, Para Street, acrylic on linen.
Alex McDonald - Pushing Boundaries; Contemporary Women's Art
16 November 2004
Gallery Gondwana is a welcome addition to the Danks Street art precinct. This airy space is the second gallery opened by Roslyn Premont Lali (she opened her first in Alice Springs in 1990). Like its counterpart in Alice Springs, Sydney's Gallery Gondwana will focus upon Indigenous artists from as far afield as Cape York in Far North Queensland, to the various communities across the Central and Western deserts.
The first exhibition at the Gallery, Pushing Boundaries; Contemporary Women's Art is full of bold paintings by artists whose ages range from a woman in her eighties (Judy Napangardi Watson) to others in their twenties (Kathleen Petyarre and Judy Napangardi). Uniting each of the artists is an ability to take the foundations of Indigenous art (dots and other storytelling techniques and motifs) and completely reshape them to create some outstanding contemporary artworks.
Rosella Namok's luminous Para Street is a stylish painting, with its thickly applied, blue acrylic paint that has then been scraped away to reveal three incandescent, yellow mazes. This piece shows Namok's willingness to experiment with her materials and integrate Indigenous and non-indigenous traditions.
Another work with a contemporary edge is Minyma Tingari by Kai Kai Nampitjin. Compared to the many brightly coloured paintings in the show, Nampitjin's pared back composition uses only black on linen to create curved forms that seem to float across the picture plane. Incredibly Kai Kai Nampitjin only began painting in 1996. She originally comes from Kiwirrkura, which is North West of Alice Springs, and now lives and works in the Pintupi community at Kintore.
The show also features two paintings by the best known artist in Gondwana's stable, Dorothy Napangardi. Already a major star, Napangardi was the subject of a retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 2002. A Warlpiri woman from the area around Mina Mina in the Northern Territory, her works look like reproductions of some minimalist sculptures that appeared the 1970s. However this connection is purely superficial as Napangardi's Salt Series and Salt on Mina Mina are narrative-based and trace the movements and activities of her Ancestors. They also mirror the natural formations of the desert environment and are therefore completely removed from western abstract art.
The only fault with the exhibition is the way that key works by Namok and Napangardi have been hung in, whaty can only be desicrbed as less than promineent positions. Quite inexplicable is the way that Napangardi's beautiful Salt Series piece is placed behind a partition at the very back of the gallery. Surely these works are the centrepieces of the exhibition and should be given prime positioning in the front room. As frustrating as this was, it was only a minor glitch in an otherwise excellent show from this promising new gallery.
More Information
Pushing Boundaries; Contemporary Women's Art
Until 4 December
Gallery Gondwana, Danks Street, Waterloo
Details: (02) 8399 3492
Website: http://www.gallerygondwana.com.au/
