We are in Wonder LAND: New Experimental Art from Central Australia
- When 15 May - 15 Aug 2015
- Where
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Address
CNR OXFORD ST & GREENS RD, PADDINGTON NSW 2021
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Hours
Tues to Sat, 10am-5pm
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Phone
+61 2 8936 0888
Contemporary desert Aboriginal art is breaking new aesthetic and political ground as never before. New media and messages, new local and international collaborations, and new artists are energetically renewing and reshaping desert art and cultural traditions. The central and western deserts are lively, contested, thriving places, where urgent cultural and political claims are taking flight on a horizon of expanded expressive possibilities.
On digital screens, canvas and fabric; woven, painted and stitched; clicked, scripted and pressed; written, spoken and sung – contemporary desert art experimentation and innovation are energetically carrying old and new stories into new forms, conversations and spaces.
Meeting together in 'We are in Wonder LAND' senior and emerging artists, articulate masterful engagements of their own local art histories and 21st-century art possibilities, re-imagining the past and opening new places for future desert voices.
Exclusive to Sydney, 'We are in Wonder LAND' invites audiences to experience bold desert photographic works, new media installations, paintings, soft sculptures, documentary films, animations, self/portraiture, fabric, fashion and fibre artworks from community art centres, private and institutional collections.
Artists
Alparra School Students (Alparra/Utopia)
Shirley Adamson (Tjala Arts)
Yunkurra Billy Atkins (Martumili Artists)
Margaret Boko Nampitjinpa (Tangentyere Artists)
Nyurpaya Kaika Burton (Tjanpi Desert Weavers/Tjala Arts)
Miriam Charlie (Waralungku art centre)
Louise Daniels Napaltjarri (Tangentyere Artists)
Rhonda Unrupa Dick (Tjala Arts)
Brenda Douglas (Tjala Arts)
Blanche Ebatarinja (Yarrenyty Arltere art centre)
Lizzie (Elizabeth Marrkilyi) Ellis (Tjarlirli Arts)
Robert Fielding (Mimili Maku Arts)
David Frank (Iwantja Arts and Craft)
Levina Morton (Artists of Ampilatwatja)
Christine Multa (Ikuntji Artists)
Sally Mulda Nungala (Tangentyere Artists)
Shirley Namatjira (Yarrenyty Arltere art centre)
Vincent Namatjira (Iwantja Arts and Crafts)
Gloria Pannka (Ngurratjuta Iltja Ntjarra – Many Hands)
Hubert Pareoultja (Ngurratjuta Iltja Ntjarra– Many Hands)
Constance Robinya (Yarrenyty Arltere art centre)
Marlene Rubuntja (Yarrenyty Arltere art centre)
Sally Rubuntja (Yarrenyty Arltere art centre)
Rhonda Sharpe (Yarrenyty Arltere art centre)
Ntaria School Students (Ntaria/Hermannsburg)
Peter Tjutjata Taylor (Ngurratjuta Iltja Ntjarra – Many Hands)
Jason Japaljarri Woods (PAW Media)
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Curators
Philip Watkins (EO Desart Inc.)
Jennifer Biddle
Lisa Stefanoff (NIEA)
Presented in partnership with Desart Inc., National Institute for Experimental Arts and Cicada Press. Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts and the Australian Research Council. Desart Inc. is supported by the Australia Council for the Arts, Northern Territory Government, Australian Government Indigenous Visual Arts Industry Support and Australian Government Visual Arts and Craft Strategy.
Sally Rubuntja and Marlene Rubuntja, Woman with arms up because she is proud and woman 2013. Installation view 'We are in Wonder LAND: New Experimental Art from Central Australia', 2015. Photograph: Silversalt Photography
Public Program
We are in Wonder LAND Symposium
9am Friday 15 May, EG02 Lexture Theatre UNSW Art & Design
“…. A rare opportunity to engage directly with experimental art and new media makers from Desert communities.” Hetti Perkins
Convened by Dr Jennifer Biddle and Dr Lisa Stefanoff (NIEA, UNSW Art & Design), the symposium presents for the first time to a Sydney audience, the innovation, dynamism and activism of an emergent ‘remote’ Central and Western desert avant-garde whose innovative art-making and emergent aesthetics is literally life-making: revivifying threatened vernacular languages, cultural traditions and intangible heritage and requiring new forms of engagement and encounter.