‘SOUTH WEST CENTRAL:

Indigenous art from South Western Australia 1833–2002’

Alan R Dodge
Director
Art Gallery of Western Australia

The Art Gallery of Western Australia is proud to present ‘SOUTH WEST CENTRAL: Indigenous art from south Western Australia 1833–2002’. In its long history of commitment to the acquisition and display of Australian Indigenous art, a notable aspect has been the presentation over the past decade of exhibitions showcasing the outstanding achievements of Western Australian artists. Following ‘Rover Thomas – Trevor Nickolls’ (1990), ‘Jimmy Pike – Desert Designs 1981–1995’ (1995), ‘Daughters of the Dreaming: Sisters Together Strong’ (1997) and ‘Ngayulu-latju Palyantja – We Made These Things’ (2000) comes this first-ever survey of Nyoongar cultural expression.

Embracing a period of nearly two centuries, SOUTH WEST CENTRAL includes a reproduction of an 1833 ink drawing by Gyallipurt, sent with a dispatch to London from the fledgling colonial outpost at Swan River, and twenty-first-century digital re-takes on colonial representations by Dianne Jones. In between is a myriad of outstanding visual expressions by Nyoongar artists that reveal their relationships to their communities and traditional lands. Most painfully they recall the forcing of people from their traditional lands into fringe camps, the destruction of their traditional practices and their being rendered invisible in their own country.

In the 1860s, Indigenous artist George Coolbul and British-trained painter Henry Prinsep were possible adversaries as well as artistic colleagues bound within clearly defined hierarchies of power. Today both are represented in the State Art Collection in a building that stands on Nyoongar land. The site of the Art Gallery of Western Australia was once part of a series of abundant swamps that extended through Hyde Park and as far as Lake Monger. The Gallery acknowledges and offers respect to the traditional caretakers of this country, the Nyoongar men and women and their descendants.

SOUTH WEST CENTRAL introduces an audience to the multiplicity of Nyoongar visual culture, far broader than the well-known Carrolup tradition, important as that has been for its initiators and their heirs. It also shows the work of imprisoned artists (whether in gaol, on the reserves or in the ‘homes’) who created these visions, dreaming of freedom – from Gyallipurt’s ink illustration of a campsite far to the south of the State, a quilt made by the hands of unidentified Nyoongar children and Johnny Cudgel’s watercolour paintings of nineteenth-century sailing ships to mid-twentieth-century works by Revel Cooper, Parnell Dempster and Reynold Hart that capture the light of the sunset or the wash of moonlight over longed-for Nyoongar lands.

More recent paintings by Bella Kelly, Lance Chadd / Tjyllyungoo, Shane Pickett, Troy Bennell and Primus Ugle chart the light and lay of a landscape that is very familiar to the inhabitants of Nyoongar country. Textiles, fibre work, ceramics and paintings have been created by the descendants of earlier artists including the Marribank Co-operative artists, Jean and Lesley Riley, Joyce Winsley, Midland TAFE students, textile and fashion designers Ron Gidgup and Francine Kickett, and Geraldton-based artists Margaret Danischewsky and Cynthia Gray. Each draws inspiration from their unique cultural heritage to reaffirm their sense of place and their presence as Nyoongar people.

The 1970s saw a re-emergence of political and cultural awareness among Indigenous people across Australia through the prints and posters of artists such as Byron Pickett and Bevan Haywood / Pooaraar. Towards the end of the twentieth century Sandra Hill’s legacy of self-discovery, exposition and healing is echoed in the work of her son, Christopher Pease, and his powerful portrait of Monnop. Dianne Jones cleverly inverts colonial history and brings us right into the twenty-first century. Each ensures that the past is not only recognised but challenged.

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