Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2014-12-02 12:36:41
When I first arrived in Australia, an early writing commission was to preview the expat playwright Ray Matthew's wonderful outback play, 'Spring Song'. It captured country values and setting perfectly – so well, in fact, that he was whisked off...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2014-11-26 09:47:24
The Australian newspaper's galumphing headline writers had a field-day last Friday with their ultra-bold claim: 'Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi’s demise echoes the fate of Aboriginal art'. The obituary continued in the words of pallbearer Nicolas Rothwell: “The high-end market for traditional...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2014-10-23 17:14:26
The Queensland Art Gallery │Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) has unveiled a new permanent display of Indigenous Australian art: ‘Everywhen Everywhere’, which opened last Saturday, 18 October. QAGOMA Director Chris Saines said the collection-based exhibition, curated by the Gallery’s curator...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2014-08-13 15:14:14
In the wash-up to the 31st National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, it seems possible that the man who lead the charge to free MAGNT (the Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory) from the unenthusiastic hand...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2014-07-08 19:57:45
Art values are suffering as a result of misinformation and disproportionate anxiety about changed rules for art investments in Self-Managed Super Funds, says accountant and Indigenous art community expert, Brian Tucker. And it's been particularly damaging for Aboriginal communities, where...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2014-07-08 13:16:06
So, Hetti Perkins is back with us, refreshed from a sabbatical period post-Art Gallery of NSW, where she used to be the first, and so far only, senior curator of Aboriginal Art. I wonder why they think they can manage...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2014-03-03 12:46:59
The body that represents Aboriginal art centres in the far North - ANKAAA – is being as dynamic as ever. I've reported before on its collaborative efforts to train up Indigenous arts workers by arranging courses and work experience that...» Read More
Posted by Frannie Hopkirk | 2014-02-17 14:01:25
Arabs believe that the soul can travel at the rate of a trotting camel. From that one can imagine that the souls of millennia of aboriginal nomads, roving the desert, restless, ever-moving, searching, working, contemplating their existence, drawing their Dreaming into...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2014-02-13 08:19:23
Adrian Newstead is probably uniquely qualified to write a history of that contentious business, the market for Australian Aboriginal art. He may once have planned to be an agricultural scientist, but then he mutated into a craft shop owner, Aboriginal...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2014-02-03 12:07:57
An ebullient black King Lear in a white suit arrives regally on high and breaks into a “We have survived” rap. Where are we? In Joan Littlewood's Stratford East? Barrie Kosky's Berlin? Or Michael Kantor's Malthouse Melbourne? In fact, the...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2014-01-22 17:07:49
The persistent, heart-on-his-sleeve John Pilger is back again with, I think, his third film on Australia's total failure to achieve a solution to “the Aboriginal problem”. From the era of disease and massacre via assimilation times to The Intervention,...» Read More
Posted by Aboriginal Art Directory | 2014-01-01 00:04:01
Jeremy Eccles has written for the Aboriginal Art Directory since its inception and loves the opportunity to share his experience of the Indigenous cultural world with its dedicated audience. A migrant from Margaret Thatcher's Britain, Jeremy first encountered Australia's Aborigines...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2013-12-22 19:50:44
With Aboriginal bark paintings there's the constant dilemma – how important is the aesthetic appeal of the work, and how important the story – and the status of the man telling it? The issue arises because there have been old barks...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2013-12-19 18:05:20
There was a time after the great Olympic Dreaming Festival of 1997 when I thought the case had been made for all Australian multi-arts festivals to incorporate a serious Indigenous element in their programming as a matter of course. Apart...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2013-10-11 12:33:05
It sounds as though we're off into the rarified atmospherics of quantum physics here with an exhibition called String Theory. But Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA for short) curator Glenn Barkley is just toying with his audience in...» Read More
Posted by Aboriginal Art Directory | 2013-08-09 17:46:12
The leaders of both of the main groupings of remote Aboriginal art centres have spoken out recently about the gulf between Indigenous and urban Australia. Philip Watkins, CEO of Desart, representing 45 Central Australian centres, rationalised that “High end galleries...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2013-08-01 15:31:07
Great things happen when people discard their egos and return to their roots. A mob called Barkly Regional Arts based in Tennant Creek has now completed two projects taking well-known Aboriginal pop musicians - familar through the cities via...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2013-07-26 18:59:47
After the marvels of the first two episodes, the ABC's 'First Footprints' makes slightly less impact in bringing Australia up to date through the last 6/7000 years. There are simply fewer firsts than there have already been noted: the First...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2013-07-13 14:50:28
The power of TV to educate and change minds is nowhere more apparent than in the new 4-part ABC TV series beginning on Sunday night. 'First Footsteps' will, hopefully achieve what the balefully accusatory 'First Australians' series failed to do...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2013-07-09 18:34:36
“It was a big rock that set off so many ripples,” was how Leila Gurruwiwi from Yirrkala in NE Arnhemland put it on Radio National this morning. She was talking about the great Bark Petition to the Australian Parliament in...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2013-07-04 17:53:17
This film is a delightful fable shot in some magical East Kimberley scenery by the masterly Geoff Simpson. And even though the film's conclusion has similarities to the glorious, gritty Samson & Delilah, this is a gentle film in which...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2013-06-28 18:11:09
Aboriginal Art News wishes to pay tribute to the late Mandawuy Yunupingu, who died in Yirrkala, NE Arnhemland on June 2nd aged 56. He had been fighting end-stage renal disease and had undergone dialysis for several years. This is...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2013-04-19 19:42:44
We live in exclusive times! Or should that be exclusionary? Two major Indigenous events announced in Sydney this week turn out to be less than they appear in that they offer, respectively, “indigenous history, feeling and disturbing visions that reach into...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2013-03-06 19:00:16
Lance Bennett was one of the more enigmatic figures in the very conflicted world of interlocutors betweens Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultures....neither an anthropologist nor a dealer, but a heroic warrior for tribal people against insensitivity and lack of understanding in...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2013-02-14 17:12:38
The Western Australian Indigenous Art Awards, the richest Indigenous arts prize in the country since they began in 2008, today announced the 16 artists who'll fight it out for a share in $65,000 worth of prizes. They include such leaders...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2012-12-19 11:26:59
by Jennifer Isaacs, published by the wonderful Miegunyah Press at Melbourne University at $120 It's been an amazing year for Aboriginal art books – never known a better. If only I'd had time to read them all rather than just dip...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2012-11-17 11:55:35
Alice Springs is in party mode this weekend as Papunya Tula Artists (PTA) celebrates the 40th anniversary of its founding in 1972, just one year after Aboriginal Desert painting had started at the 'prison camp' that was the government settlement...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2012-10-08 15:25:06
The big NGV exhibition Tjukurrtjanu – Origins of Western Desert Art ( 'Aux Sources de la Peinture Aborigene') opens in the Musee du quai Branly today. It's the first Australian art show at the museum – which opened...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2012-09-28 16:52:17
There are obsessives – and then there's Mike Donaldson. The 67 year old geologist has already produced a mighty book of images from the Burrup Peninsular area, alerting the world to its remote beauty and the threat from industrial developments...» Read More
Posted by Aboriginal Art Directory | 2012-08-10 15:45:11
“It's a really interesting year, I think – characterised by strong women. Where have artists like Cornelia Tipuamantumeri, Barbara Moore and Rhonda Sharpe suddenly come from? Pow!!” Very new Curator of Indigenous Art at the Museum & Art Gallery of the...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2012-06-15 12:59:46
A welcome change at the Sydney Film Festival was a special program of Indigenous films – Australian and international. This appears to be a move out of the Opera House by Rachel Perkins's Blackfella Films, where their Message Sticks film...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2012-05-31 19:15:18
Across the Pacific in Seattle collectors Bob Kaplan and Margaret Levi have developed a relationship with their local Seattle Art Museum (SAM) so that a 100+ artwork show opens today and runs into September. And even though there's only optimism...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2012-05-23 14:27:49
Why did the word 'colourless' spring to my mind when trying to sum up the National Gallery's second National Indigenous Art Triennial? I think the answer intrinsically springs from the diminished role played by vibrant Desert art. Yes – there's...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2012-05-14 13:58:40
They keep trying to say that the 40 year old Aboriginal art movement is doomed by the inevitable death if its elders. But just a decade ago, no one had heard of the Yolngu artist, Gulumbu Yunupingu. The then-56 year...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2012-04-02 14:48:15
The grand re-opening of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney has confirmed for many the view that the Aboriginal art of today is as contemporary as such trendy names as Hany Armanious, Ah Xian, Rivane Neuenschwander and Christian Marclay...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2012-03-16 11:37:18
The two year tour of fibre work from the small, almost unknown Arnhemland community of Gapuwiyak is continuing with its opening in Sydney, at the Object Gallery later this month. Originating from Wagga Wagga Art Gallery under the aegis of...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2012-03-01 13:28:55
Just as Mankind emerged from the sea in evolutionary history, Aboriginal life in Arhemland advanced mythologically out of the Gulf of Carpentaria at Yalangabara to become the many clans of the Dhuwa moiety. But, while the rest of us took...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2012-02-16 15:45:57
In June 2011, Jeffrey Lee travelled from remote Arnhemland to Paris to meet with UNESCO officials. As the last surviving member of the Djok Clan, he was attempting to get his precious country at Koongarra added to the World Heritage...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2012-01-20 11:31:38
The Lavertys - Colin and Liz - are legends in their own lifetimes. For they've not only built the largest Aboriginal art collection in this country – others overseas, such as the late John Kluge's, now at the University of...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2011-08-13 00:39:05
YOUNG YOLNGU WINS IN WA The most valuable indigenous art prize – the Western Australia Indigenous Art Award of $50,000 has been won by Gunybi Ganambarr from Yirrkala in NW Arnhemland. After two years of triumphs by artists from the Buku...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2011-06-11 14:51:12
The incomparable former art director at Maningrida in western Arnhemland– Apolline Kohen – was both very fond of the Kurulk clan group of painters attached to the art centre and cognisant of the fact that no art centre could reply...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2011-06-10 16:28:13
The incomparable former art director at Maningrida in western Arnhemland– Apolline Kohen – was both very fond of the Kurulk clan group of painters attached to the art centre and cognisant of the fact that no art centre could reply...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2011-06-01 17:11:19
The former Didgeri Air Art Tours – by which many an art collector has accessed remote community art centres with their piles of raw, exciting canvases – has changed its name to Palya Art Tours and climbed into bed with...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2011-05-25 19:58:12
There are probably no other collectors in Australia who could get away with naming an exhibition 'Laverty 2' and expect instant recognition by viewers. But then Colin and Liz Laverty have the advantage of having had such a big impact...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2011-04-29 17:28:56
A wonderful suite of paintings by Oenpelli's Alex Nganjimirra has emerged five years after his death just in time to celebrate the Royal Wedding. Painted between 2002 and 2004, the son of Bobby Nganjimirra simply imagined the English 'Queen lady”...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2011-04-29 17:18:12
It is with great sadness that AAN learnt of the passing this week of Dr. Thancoupie Gloria Fletcher AO, best known simply as Thancoupie the Potter. She died aged 74 at Weipa Base Hospital on Cape York after a...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2010-12-13 13:51:05
The life and work of the great Bardayal 'Lofty' Nadjamerrek is being celebrated this summer at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. One immediate challenge to the mind is to wonder how the man known as “the last of...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2010-12-01 14:09:43
The Museum Ludwig in Cologne has opened a significant exhibition of Australian art in a series which has included important Western artists such as Gerhard Richter in 2008 and Christopher Wool in 2009. Here is the curatorial take on this pioneering...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2010-11-11 14:22:20
How to tackle this intimately informed, radically revisionist but ultimately frustrating tale of the art movement that did more than anything to change Australia's views about its indigenous people and bring their culture closer to the cities of the south? For...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2010-10-03 19:28:19
Prototype, precedent, templet, archetype, scantling, paradigm...so reads my Roget's Thesaurus – which I think gives you the drift of my thinking regarding the importance of recent events in Canberra. No – not on the Hill, where Tony Abbott seems determined not...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2010-09-17 17:57:46
It's quite strange when the one thing you know a man by doesn't get a mention in his obituary! That's happened repeatedly with the late John Kluge – known in Australia virtually only because of his magnificent Aboriginal art collection...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2010-08-13 14:11:58
“I was truly amazed by the strength of the competition this year”, declared one of the two final judges of the 27th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Art Awards at today's announcement of the winners in Darwin. Sylvia Kleinert, an...» Read More
Posted by Aboriginal Art Directory | 2010-07-05 20:30:22
Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art – Now July 9 – August 31, 2010 Sante Fe, NM- Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art in association with Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne, Australia, will present the inaugural biennale exhibition, Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art – Now. This exhibition presents new...» Read More
Posted by Aboriginal Art Directory | 2010-07-05 20:20:19
Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art (Main Space) 702 ½ Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 87501 09 July 2010 - 31 August 2010 Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art in association with Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne, Australia, will present the inaugural biennale exhibition, Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art – Now....» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2010-06-18 13:34:53
The Queen's Birthday this year added two top Aboriginal artists to the roll of honour. John Mawurndjul from Maningrida in Western Arnhemland and Peggy Patrick from the East Kimberley both became Members of the Order of Australia – AMs. Mawurndjul's citation...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2010-05-25 17:18:25
Sam Cook is a member of the Nyikina nation of the western Kimberley and grew up surrounded by the arts. Her career has taken her through performing in music and theatre, literature, visual arts and executive arts management. Sam started...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2010-05-05 15:29:20
Johnny Bulun Bulun was born in 1946 just after the Second World War near the Arafura Swamp of Central Arnhem Land. When he was older, his family moved to the nearby mission in Milingimbi so that he could attend school....» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2010-04-23 16:08:00
The 16 finalists in the nation’s richest indigenous arts prize, the Western Australian Indigenous Art Awards, were today announced by State Culture and the Arts Minister, John Day. Mr Day congratulated the artists who have been invited to participate in the...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2010-03-13 16:46:31
I was drawn to this gorgeous and important book, 'We Are One' by the prospect of Damien Hirst – the English artist infamous for his crazy concepts like a floating shark or a diamond encrusted skull – sharing his...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2010-02-25 16:45:45
The Northern Territory's Togart Contemporary Art Award is one of Australia’s richest contemporary art awards and entries are now open until 15th March. The annual Award is open to all artists who base their practice within the Northern Territory or whose...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2010-02-10 15:30:02
David Elliott, director of the 17th Biennale of Sydney later this year, scratched an old sore today in launching his forthcoming feast of visual arts by asserting that “all art is folk art”. As a major feature of his BOS...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2010-02-04 09:07:19
The Yolgnu community of Eastern Arnhemland and art lovers widely are celebrating the recognition of the Madarrpa clan leader, Buku-Larrngay Arts Chairman and ANKAAA Chairman, Djambawa Marawili, who received a Member (AM) in the General Division of the Order of...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2009-10-30 18:36:35
Wamud Namok was universally known in life as Lofty. This tall, gentle man first engaged with the white invader when he was about 16 in 1942 – walking 200 kms from his West Arnhemland Stone Country home to work in...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2009-10-28 16:27:25
I first spotted Gunybi Ganambarr's powers of innovation at the Melbourne Art Fair a couple of years ago. Out of nowhere, seemingly, a bold black and white bark lit up the Annandale Galleries stall. A year later, he was recognised...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2009-09-11 18:23:51
Menagerie is back in town! The 3-D show that began life in Sydney in 2009 spread across two venues - the Australian Museum and Object Gallery, has returned from its travels to Sydney. But it's all in one place this...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2009-09-09 00:18:07
The Tiwi people who drove the first White colonialists off their remote Melville Island (80kms north of Darwin) less than 5 years after they tried to establish a fort there are enjoying yet more schadenfreude as their ancient burial poles...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2009-08-12 15:47:20
“My art is a story about the universe – about the stars”, says Gulumbu Yunupingu artlessly. The eldest member of the important Yunupingu clan, on whose land in the far North East corner of Arnhemland the annual Garma Festival has...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2009-06-22 13:27:49
Thomson Time was discovered Down South when the film, Ten Canoes revealed that in parts of Arnhemland, the period when anthropologist Donald Thomson photographed and recorded his encounters with Yolgnu people in the 1930s and 40s have come to be...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2009-06-10 13:45:29
It could hardly be further from the rich wetlands of the Roper River on the Gulf of Carpentaria coast at the southern fringe of Arnhemland. But the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery in dry old New South Wales has just opened...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2009-05-01 20:11:33
The Cannes Film Festival will host the world-wide launch of the Aussie film, Samson & Delilah – featuring the great Warlpiri artist, Mitjili Napanangka Gibson, in her second film role. Not only the artist, but her art features seriously in...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2009-04-28 13:17:51
A brief survey of the great Arnhemland artist, John Mawurndjul's work has been mounted in Canberra. It sits at the Drill Hall Gallery in the ANU until 24th May. The occasion was also used to launch a book of the...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2009-03-25 12:37:26
The small showing of barks and works on paper collected by Charles Pearcy Mountford during his American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhemland in 1948 – currently at the AGNSW – raises more questions than it answers. Which is not necessarily a...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2008-11-03 14:18:29
Pintupu artist Patrick Tjungurrayi has taken out the richest indigenous art prize in the country - the new WA Indigenous Art Award, established last year at $50,000 for the national prize, and $10,000 for a WA winner. June Walkutjukurr Richards...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2008-10-01 19:56:11
In only its second year, the Northern Territory's Toga Contemporary Art Award is touring the Top End. It opens in Alice Spring tomorrow, moving to Tennant Creek in November and Katherine in December. Readers familiar with the Telstra Awards will assume...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2008-09-19 16:47:30
The Aboriginal Benefits Foundation's plans for a Healing Centre at Yirrkala in Arnhemland took a proud step forward last night when well over $300,000 was raised at an auction in the capable hands of Robert Bleakley, ex-boss of Sotheby's. The...» Read More
Posted by Jeremy Eccles | 2008-09-15 15:57:23
Excitement in Sydney as Roslyn Oxley - owner of the Paddington gallery where Bill Henson was banned and where Piccinini, Moffatt, TV Moore and other hot contemporary artists show - is giving over her white walls to barks from Arnhemland. This...» Read More
Posted by Aboriginal Art Directory | 2007-12-14 07:47:57
Austrade Aboriginal Arts Collectors Tour Media Release 7 delegates over 14 days will take 8 charter flights visiting more than 23 remote art centres getting unparalleled access and attention from the industry’s leading figures Join Us Come join us for an unforgettable experience,...» Read More
Posted by Aboriginal Art Directory | 2007-09-07 06:40:04
Jeremy Eccles, Financial Times (UK) 7 September 2007 “Are you ready for London?” Apolline Kohen asks artist Samuel Namunjdja. “What time we going?” is his eager response about a visit that is still a month away. Time has an elastic quality out...» Read More
Posted by Aboriginal Art Directory | 2006-10-18 06:42:52
John Mawurndjul is considered one of the most significant Australian artists of his generation. He has led a virtual revolution in bark painting, transforming the work of his country in central Arnhemland from what is referred to as X- Ray...» Read More
Posted by Aboriginal Art Directory | 2005-04-15 00:00:00
Senior Alawa Community Lawman and Artist, Barney Ellaga is to make the long journey down from his traditional homeland in South East Arnhemland to the port City of Fremantle in W.A. especially for the opening of his first solo exhibition...» Read More
Posted by Aboriginal Art Directory | 2003-09-05 00:00:00
After the phenomenal international success of the late, acclaimed Ginger Riley from the remote Arnhemland region around the Roper River comes an exciting new wave of established and emerging artists from the Ngukurr Community. Telstra Award winning artist, Ginger Riley...» Read More
Posted by Aboriginal Art Directory | 2002-12-13 08:47:35
A list of exhibitions held by Japingka Gallery prior to 2003: Lorna Napurrula Fencer Generations - Utopia artists - click for preview Painters of the Kimberley & Western Desert Minnie Pwerle & Mary Mclean Little Gems Lajamanu Artists of the Tanami Michael Nelson Jagamara Sand Spinifex & Salt-...» Read More