Ngurra by JGM Gallery

NGURRA

JGM GALLERY - LONDON AN EXHIBITION OF

PA I N T I N G S & S C U L P T U R E S

BY FOURTEEN

F I R S T N AT I O N S A R T I S T S

North Kimberley, Western Australia. Image courtesy of The Warmun Art Centre.

NGURRA E X H I B I T I N G AT J G M G A L L E RY L O N D O N

A N E X H I B I T I O N O F S C U L P T U R E S & PA I N T I N G S B Y 1 4 F I R S T N AT I O N S A RT I S T S 6 D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 3 TO 1 7 F E B RUA RY 2 0 2 4

JGM GALLERY PRESENTS NGURRA, AN EXHIBITION OF PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURES BY 14 FIRST NATIONS AUSTRALIAN ARTISTS. "NGURRA", MEANING COUNTRY, IS A TERM THAT APPEARS IN MANY INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN LANGUAGES. THE WORD REFERS TO THEIR TRADITIONAL LANDS, WATERWAYS AND SEAS, BUT ALSO CARRIES MORE NUANCED AND SPIRITUAL CONNOTATIONS THAN ITS WESTERN EQUIVALENT. CONTAINED WITHIN THE TERM AND, BY EXTENSION, PAINTINGS OF COUNTRY, ARE COMPLEX IDEAS ABOUT LAW, LANGUAGE, SPIRITUAL BELIEF, MATERIAL SUSTENANCE AND IDENTITY. THIS EXHIBITION BRINGS TOGETHER THE WORK OF 14 ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA WHOSE SUBJECT IS THEIR COUNTRY. MANY OF THE PAINTINGS CAN BE CONCEIVED OF AS DESCRIPTIVE DEPICTIONS OF THE LAND, CARRYING FOR THE ARTIST AND THEIR COMMUNITY A VERY UTILITARIAN PURPOSE. THE WORK OF KEITH WIKMUNEA, BY EXAMPLE, ILLUSTRATES THE SALT DEPOSITS AND FOOD SOURCES THAT REMAIN FOLLOWING THE RECESSION OF WATER FROM THE COASTAL PLAINS OF AURUKUN. AT THE SAME TIME, THE SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THESE PIECES CAN BE GLEANED THROUGH A MORE ABSTRACT READING. INDEED, ONE OF THE MANY STRENGTHS OF AN AESTHETIC SUCH AS MARY GIBSON'S OR KITTY SIMON'S, IS ITS ABILITY TO RECONCILE THE DESCRIPTIVENESS OF REPRESENTATION WITH THE INTENSITY OF ABSTRACTION. AS THIS EXHIBITION DEMONSTRATES, COUNTRY IS NOT VIEWED DISPASSIONATELY BY INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS BUT AS A LIVING AND EVEN FAMILIAL PART OF THEIR LIVES. BECAUSE OF THIS, PAINTINGS OF COUNTRY OFTEN SEEM DISTINCTLY ANIMATED, AN EFFECT SOMETIMES ACHIEVED THROUGH DENSE DOT AND LINE WORK. THE RESULT IS A HALLUCINOGENIC QUALITY THAT IMBUES MANY OF THE PAINTINGS FROM NGURRA WITH A SENSE OF LIFE AND ALCHEMICAL TRANSFORMATION. THE ENVIRONMENTAL REVERENCE CONVEYED IN THESE PAINTINGS IS ESPECIALLY RELEVANT IN THE CONTEXT OF COLONISATION AND THE DESTRUCTION OF TRADITIONAL HOMELANDS. THE TENNANT CREEK BRIO, REPRESENTED IN THIS EXHIBITION BY THE WORK OF LINDSAY NELSON AND MARCUS CAMPHOO, USE THEIR ART AND DEPICTIONS OF COUNTRY AS A VEHICLE FOR A BROADER SOCIAL CRITIQUE. PAINTING ON MINING MAPS, NELSON SUPERIMPOSES HIS VISION OF THE LAND ONTO A MORE EMPIRICAL REPRESENTATION. HIS WORK IS THUS DEFIANTLY EXPRESSIVE AND IT IS PERHAPS IN NELSON AND CAMPHOO'S WORK THAT THE CONTRASTS BETWEEN THE ABORIGINAL AND WESTERN CONCEPTION OF THE NATURAL WORLD IS MOST DISTINCT. JENNIFER GUERRINI MARALDI (DIRECTOR OF JGM GALLERY ) WRITES THAT "THERE IS AN AESTHETIC SOPHISTICATION TO THESE LANDSCAPES THAT IS SADLY OFTEN OVERLOOKED BY FOLLOWERS OF THE WESTERN CANON. EXPRESSED IN THESE PAINTINGS IS NOT JUST BEAUTY AND POWER, BUT THE WISDOM OF THE WORLD'S OLDEST UNBROKEN CULTURE." EXHIBITING ARTISTS INCLUDE: BOB GIBSON | GEORGE COOLEY | JUDITH WALKABOUT | KEITH WIKMUNEA | KITTY NAPANANGKA SIMON | LILY NUNGARRAYI HARGRAVES | LINDSAY MALAY | LINDSAY NELSON | LYDIA BALBAL | MARCUS CAMPHOO | MARY GIBSON | PATRICK MUNG MUNG | SELMA HOOSAN | CARISSA GURWALWAL.

CONTENTS FOREWORD BY JENNIFER GUERRINI MARALDI

ESSAY BY ANTONIA CRICHTON-BROWN

9 - 11

ARTWORKS

15 - 40

Bob Gibson, Patjanta (detail), 2020, acrylic and oil on canvas, 176.5cm x 146.5cm.

FOREWORD BY JENNIFER GUERRINI MARALDI

he First Nations People of Australia inherit the oldest unbroken culture in human history. One of the reasons for this longevity is the reverence they hold for the natural world. This view of the environment is reflected in paintings of Country, a term which denotes far more than a merely empirical estimation of one's surroundings. It encompasses ancestry, material sustenance, law, identity and interdependence. In times such as ours, we would do well to consider and learn from this knowledge system which, rather than exploiting the environment, moves with it. My passion for First Nations Art is not only sustained by its boundless originality, but also by the journeys I have made through the landscapes that are its predominant subject. Indeed, it has been the privilege of my life to be welcomed to Country numerous times and it was on these occasions that I first saw the work of many of the exhibiting artists. Though it is not my place to welcome others to Country, I have always felt compelled to promote depictions of it at JGM Gallery. I am incredibly proud to present this exhibition to our community of friends and visitors and it is my hope that Ngurra will enhance their conception of the world around us, as it has mine.

North Kimberley, Western Australia. Image courtesy of The Warmun Art Centre.

George Cooley, Untitled (detail), 2023, acrylic on canvas, 157cm x 190cm. Image courtesy of Daniel Browne.

Gibson Desert, Western Australia. Image courtesy of Tjarlirli & Kaltukatjara Art Centre.

Essay By Antonia Crichton-Brown ANTONIA CRICHTON-BROWN IS A GALLERY ASSISTANT AND COPYWRITER AT JGM GALLERY. CRICHTONBROWN IS COMPLETING HER UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE AT THE COURTAULD INSTITUTE OF ART IN LONDON, FOCUSING HER STUDIES ON THE ABORIGINAL ART INDUSTRY IN AUSTRALIA, PARTICIPATORY ART, INDIGENOUS LAND RIGHTS AND POST-COLONIAL THOUGHT.

not understand what they were seeing.” 2 Based on Myers' observations, the translation and transmission of cultural lore to both "outsiders" and cultural members seems not to have been a concern at this time. Since the 1970s Papunya Tula movement, however, the driving force behind the production of Aboriginal and First Nations art has undergone significant change. Now, as Wik-Alken artist, Keith Wikmunea, emphasises, the work of Indigenous artists is not only seen as a commercial product but as a means of keeping “... knowledge alive by handing it to [their] children and grandchildren.”3Art making is recognised as a necessary form of political labour, pressing to reinsert Indigenous knowledge into internal and international dialogues.

NGURRA: A LIBRARY OF KNOWLEDGE

n 2016, Stephen Gilchrist curated Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia at Harvard Art Museums. His catalogue contribution reads: “For Indigenous people, the earth, sea, and sky are libraries of knowledge through which one encounters traces of the Ancestral Beings, who emerged from, roamed, and sometimes metamorphosed into bodies of water, planetary systems, and features of the landscape.” 1 The metaphorical comparison that Gilchrist makes between “libraries of knowledge” and geological and celestial bodies suggests an act of translation. Gilchrist uses ‘library’ as an academic metonym for Indigenous sites of knowledge: “the earth, sea, and sky.” His effort to translate in order to transmit a mutual understanding between writer and reader is similar to the approach taken by many Aboriginal and First Nations artists. Shadowed by various Australian governments’ policy of assimilation during the twentieth century, artists’ work was often characterised by hybrid representational aesthetics. For example, in the early watercolours of Arrernte painter, Albert Namatjira, and the frontier cowboy illustrations and painted shields of Warumungu carver, Nat Warano, their intuitive modes of representation convened with a European aesthetic based on what is material and visible through sight. The inclusion of both these levels of representation – one in the style we now consider as typical of contemporary Western Desert fine art and the other of caricature – speaks to properties of cross-cultural translation. The associations that one cultural group makes from looking may be different to those of another, especially when their ontologies have developed at such a vast distance from one another and under incontiguous circumstances.

The works of fourteen Aboriginal and First Nations artists, which have been brought together in JGM Gallery’s Ngurra exhibition, represent the knowledge of multiple homelands across Australia. ‘Ngurra’ in translation from Western Desert languages is summarised as ‘Country’, however, this term embodies a field of meanings which deserve further explanation. For Indigenous people, ‘Ngurra’ is home, whether that be in the form of land or a house. ‘Ngurra’ is a reference to important water sites. When a child is born, their ‘Ngurra’ is the place where their parents encountered the child’s spirit during pregnancy. ‘Ngurra’ is where someone was born, where they grew up, where their parents or grandparents or great grandparents were born and where they grew up.4 ‘Ngurra’ encodes kinship, ceremonial practice, spiritual beings, knowledge of resources, ancestral ties, the living and the dead, much like the library of Gilchrist’s reference. Returning to his words, ‘Ngurra’ – much like an archive – can be considered a container for accumulating knowledge, or “knowledge becoming.” 5 From a Derridean standpoint, the control of the archive always infers political power. “At once institutive and conservative. Revolutionary and traditional,” the archive “... keeps, it puts in reserve, it saves but in an unnatural fashion, that is to say in making the law… or in making people respect the law.” 6Adopting Derrida’s view, I suggest that Gilchrist’s comparison between libraries and lands indicates that land and its visual interpretations are perhaps also political apparatuses for Indigenous people. The etymology of ‘archive’ derives from the Greek word ‘arkheîon’ which was the house of archons, a government building where documents were filed. The archons were their guardians.7 ‘Ngurra’ can perhaps be compared with the ‘arkheîon’ where Indigenous people are the guardians of its submerged histories. Paintings of ‘Ngurra’ are the documents showing the social realities of their guardianship. Like a library contains the voices of many authors interpreting similar stories, JGM Gallery’s Ngurra offers a space in which the documents of Indigenous artists can be read. Each artist translates a cultural relationship to Country in their own unique stylistic language. Derrida writes, “There is no archive… without outside.”8 The works in Ngurra seem to respond to this statement – protecting, preserving and translating the artists’ land, community, values and customs – adding to and strengthening their library.

When artist and school-teacher, Geoffrey Bardon, encouraged painting in Papunya in 1971-72 among the senior men of various Indigenous linguistic and social groups, who had congregated at the government settlement, he asked them not to paint sacred or ceremonial images. However, the men did so in spite of Bardon’s recommendations. Fred Myers reasons that “The Papunya painters themselves had imagined that their paintings would circulate only outside Papunya, far away from the Aboriginal domain, and thus would not transgress secrecy rules because they were to be viewed exclusively by outsiders who would

FOOTNOTES 1

Stephen Gilchrist, ‘Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia’, ed. Stephen Gilchrist, Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia (Cambridge: Harvard Art Museums 2016), 019.

Fred Myers, Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002).

Keith Wikmunea, Antonia Crichton Brown and Gabe Waterman, ed. Julius Killerby, ‘Keith Wikmunea In Conversation’, Aak Keenkanam: From The Beginning (JGM Gallery, 2023), 7.

National Museum of Australia, ‘Ngurra’, https://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/ yiwarra-kuju-canning-stock-route/artworks/ngurra, accessed 15 November 2023.

Edouard Glissant, ‘Imaginary’, Poetics of Relation (Gallimard, 1990), trans. Betsy Wing (Cambridge, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 1.

Jacques Derrida, trans. Eric Prenowitz, ‘Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression’, Diacritics (Summer 1995), Vol. 25, No. 2, 12.

Derrida, ‘Archive Fever’, 9-10.

Opposite: Marcus Camphoo, Untitled II, 2023, acrylic paint on mining map, 88cm x 59cm. Image courtesy of Daniel Browne. Antonia Crichton-Brown with Bob Gibson's Patjanta, 2023. Image courtesy of Julius Killerby.

Derrida, ‘Archive Fever’, 14. 11

Patrick Mung Mung, Droving Through Texas (detail), 2019, natural ochre on canvas, 180cm x 180cm.

Carissa Gurwalwal, Mimih Spirits, 2023, acrylic on wood, variable dimensions

Bob Gibson, Patjanta, 2020, acrylic and oil on canvas, 176.5cm x 146.5cm

George Cooley, Untitled, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 157cm x 190cm 17

Keith Wikmunea, Piintal - Apalech Saltpan Country, 2023, earth pigment on linen, 200cm x 131cm

Judith Walkabout, Iwantja Springs, 2023, acrylic on linen, 122cm x 152cm

Lily Nungarrayi Hargraves, Purpurlarla, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 180cm x 150cm

Kitty Napanangka Simon, Minamina Dreaming - Minamina Juk, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 120cm x 150cm

Marcus Camphoo, Untitled I (detail), 2023, acrylic paint on mining map, 70cm x 95cm. Image courtesy of Daniel Browne.

Lindsay Nelson, Ceremonial Motif I, 2023, acrylic paint on mining map

Lindsay Malay, My Ganggyi Country, 2019, natural ochre on canvas, 150cm x 150cm 25

Lindsay Nelson, Ceremonial Motif II, 2023, acrylic paint on mining map

Lindsay Nelson, Ceremonial Motif III, 2023, acrylic paint on mining map 27

Lydia Balbal, Martakulu II, 2023, acrylic on linen, 85cm x 108cm

Lydia Balbal, Martakulu I, 2023, acrylic on linen, 75cm x 86cm

Marcus Camphoo, Untitled I, 2023, acrylic paint on mining map, 70cm x 95cm 31

Marcus Camphoo, Untitled II, 2023, acrylic paint on mining map, 88cm x 59cm

Mary Gibson, Ngayaku Ngurra II, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 120cm x 90cm

Patrick Mung Mung, Droving Through Texas, 2019, natural ochre on canvas, 180cm x 180cm

Selma Marrbarmarnyar Hoosan, Chasing The Wild Bullocky, 2023, acrylic on Arches paper, 57cm x 76cm

Selma Marrbarmarnyar Hoosan, One Breakaway, 2023, acrylic on Arches paper, 57cm x 76cm

Selma Marrbarmarnyar Hoosan, Camp Dogs, 2023, acrylic on Arches paper, 57cm x 76cm

Selma Marrbarmarnyar Hoosan, Piger Swamp, 2023, acrylic on Arches paper, 57cm x 76cm

Selma Marrbarmarnyar Hoosan, True Ringer Chasing The Mob, 2023, acrylic on Arches paper, 57cm x 76cm

JG M G ALLE RY ACK NOW L EDGES THE TRADITIONAL OW NERS A N D CU S TOD I A N S OF COU N T RY T H ROU G HO U T AU STR ALIA AND RECOGNISES THEIR CONTINUIN G CON N E CT I ON TO T HE L A N D , WATERS AND SKIES, OFTEN EXPRESSED THROU G H A RT. W E PAY O UR R E SPE CTS TO ARTISTS, EL DERS AND COMMUNIT Y MEMB E R S PA S T, P R E S E N T A N D FU T U R E .

Southern Wik Lands, Queensland, Australia, 2021. Image courtesy of Gabriel Waterman.

Front cover: Marcus Camphoo, Untitled I (detail), 2023, acrylic paint on mining map, 70cm x 95cm. Cover design by Antonia Crichton-Brown. Back cover: North Kimberley, Western Australia. Image courtesy of The Warmun Art Centre. Editorial design: Julius Killerby. Photography: Gabriel Waterman, Tjarlirli & Kaltukatjara Art Centre, The Warmun Art Centre & Julius Killerby. Artwork Photography: Daniel Browne. © 2023 JGM Gallery. All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-7392905-9-7. JGM Gallery 24 Howie Street London SW11 4AY info@jgmgallery.com