Not just dots

Aboriginal Art Directory | 06.03.08

Author: Catherine McAloon
News source: ABC News

Article about a current exhibition of Aboriginal Art from East Gippsland.

Quoted from the article:

Aboriginal art, especially Aboriginal art from East Gippsland, is about more than dots - that's the message the East Gippsland Aboriginal Arts Corporation is hoping to convey in a newly opened exhibition.

Wood-burnings, mono-prints, pastels, pen and ink drawings and contemporary paintings line the walls of an exhibition by artists of the East Gippsland Aboriginal Art Corporation. But one thing you wont see here are dot paintings.

"Everybody walks in and I think they honestly expect to see dots," says East Gippsland Aboriginal Art Corporation executive officer Robyn Evans. "They expect to see bark paintings and ground ochre and they are usually stunned by the contemporary style and medium and also the colour."

Robyn says the art corporation - which is unique among arts organisations in that it is 100 per cent Aboriginal owned and controlled and the only Aboriginal artists' corporation in Victoria - actively dissuades its artists from going for dots.

"We are very big on not appropriating from other places, which is why we dissuade dots unless people have links to places where they are able to do that.

"We also help our artists research their own symbols and markings from their own areas. East Gippsland is a diverse lot of people - they are not all Gunnai Kurnai, they are not all from Gippsland - they come from other places, so you will see a variety of styles based on where people have come from," Robyn says.

Nirmba Gidi Quarenook - Blak Swans Gatherin' an exhibition by the East Gippsland Aboriginal Arts Corporation is on display at Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale unitl March 30.

URL: http://www.abc.net.au/gippsland/stories/s2181177.htm?backyard

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Contact Details

Gallery: East Gippsland Aboriginal Arts Corporation
Contact: Robyn Evans
Email: egaac@egaac.org.au
Telephone: +61 3 5153 1002
Address: PO Box 847 Bairnsdale Bairnsdale 3875 VIC

 

 

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