CC Press Release | frewenarts

FREWEN ARTS PRESENTS

Connection to Country

Award – Wining Australian First Nations Artists

1 – 26 March at WWW.Gallery, 81 Salusbury Road, London, NW6 6NH

Tues to Sat 10am – 6pm /Sun 11am – 4pm

An exhibition of canvas paintings by First Nations Artists from the Western Deserts and The Kimberley of Western Australia depicting key sites across their Desert Country. Country defines the artists identities and is integral to understanding the culture and values of the artists.

Australia’s Western Desert covers some 600,000 square kilometres, encompassing The Great Sandy , Little Sandy and Gibson Deserts. The land is a network of scared sites embodying complex and ancient cosmogonies, contours and spaces that hold profound meaning and intergenerational stories.

The artists’ response to their country and cultural lives are powerful testaments as well as masterful contemporary paintings.

The exhibition features winner of the General Painting in the 2021 Australian Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, Bugai Whyoulter and Senior Martu Artists; Wokka Taylor (deceased), Mulyatingki Marney and Jakayu Biljabu.

All have works currently in the National Museum of Australia’s blockbuster international touring exhibition Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters. (Musee du Quai Branly , Paris, France April – July 2023).

The show also features two large scale collaborative paintings by the Wangkatjungka Artists of The Kimberley in the far north Western Deserts. Senior Artist George Tuckerbox worked with fellow artists to produce a series of collaborative canvases marking records of family ownership of groups of waterholes embedded in the knowledge and law of the Wangkatjunka people.

Many of the artist contributed to the largest Aboriginal Desert painting (80 metre square) – Ngurrara Canvas, that was presented to the Australian National Native Title Tribunal in 1997 as evidence to determine Native Title over 83,886 Square Kilometres.

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School visits welcome : Images on Request

Georgina Martin of Frewen Arts has worked with and alongside Australian First Nation artists since 1992, exhibiting First Nations Art in the UK since 1997