Warmun Art Exhibition Warmun Art
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Warmun Art Exhibition Warmun Art Since its inception in 1998, Warmun Art Centre has been one of remote Australia’s most significant cultural institutions. Warmun Art Centre works with some of the most prominent contemporary painters in Australia. From the barramundi scales of Lena Nyadbi (which are now visible from the Eiffel Tower in Paris) to the vibrant imagery of Rammey Ramsey, the complex storytelling contained in Rusty Peters’ paintings and the now iconic Garnkiny doo Wardal (moon and star) by Mabel Juli. Warmun Art Centre is owned and governed by Gija people. The Art Centre has always had as a primary goal the conservation of culturally and socially significant objects and knowledge systems and has fostered the production of art as a powerful means of cultural continuity, transmission and innovation. Gija artists continue to hold a place among the nation’s leading contemporary practitioners. Their work is exhibited and held in important collections internationally and locally in the Country’s flagship art institutions such as the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Australia and National Gallery of Victoria as well as the Country’s top commercial galleries. Disclaimer: Lander & Rogers advises that this guide contains images or names of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Profiles, descriptions and images are courtesy of Warmun Art Centre. Front Cover: Images left to right: Patrick Mung Mung at Warmun Art Centre. 2 x Detail, artwork in progress, natural ochre and pigments on canvas. Phyllis Thomas at Warmun Art Centre. Ariel view near Warmun. Richard Thomas at Warmun Art Centre. Warmun Art Centre merchandise. Courtesy & Copyright Warmun Art Centre. 2 Phyllis Thomas Phyllis Thomas was a Gija woman of Nagarra skin whose bush name, Booljoonngali, means 'big rain coming down with lots of wind'. She was born at a place called Riya on the Turner River, south east of the Bungle-Bungles. When Phyllis was young she worked on Turner Station looking after poultry, gardening, grinding salt and carting water from the well but often preferred to run away into the bush with the old women. She loved walking all over the country with her grandmother and the other old women, hunting, collecting dingo scalps and looking for gold. She married Joe Thomas from Rugun, Crocodile Hole and lived there for many years. She began painting when Freddie Timms set up the Jirrawun Art at Crocodile Hole. Her work depicting Dreaming places and bush tucker from the Crocodile Hole area as well as the country around the middle reaches of the Ord and Turner rivers where she was born, achieved almost immediate success. She was represented in the Telstra Art award exhibition in 1999 with a stunning picture Boornbem Goorlem, Hot Water Spring II done in black and a pinkish red colour made by mixing red and white ochre. The spring is in a gorge with the open sky shown as a plain expanse of paint above the water and rock faces. Other works include Bush Honey - ‘Sugarbag’ Dreaming at Dry Swamp in which the dark cells of the hives float on a plain ground, and Loomoogool Blue Tongue Lizard Dreaming in which a prominent landscape feature is seen from the side. Phyllis' work has been acquired by a number of collectors and galleries including a special focus purchase of five paintings by the Western Australian Art Gallery in 2000. Her painting 'The Escape' done as part of a series of paintings relating to massacre stories by Jirrawun artists intended to be shown together as "Blood on the Spinifex" was exhibited at the Seventeenth National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award Exhibition in 2000 and was highly commended. It was purchased as part of the MAGNT Telstra collection. This image was used as the poster and catalogue cover for the exhibition at the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne between December 2002 and March 2003. An eight panel series on the same subject was shown at Raft Artspace in Darwin in April 2002. This was purchased by the Western Australian Art Gallery in 2003. Phyllis was also a singer and dancer with the Neminuwarlin Performance Group in its production of Fire, Fire Burning Bright which premiered at the Perth International Arts Festival in February 2002 and opened the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts the State Theatre of Victoria in October 2002. She sang the haunting Warnalirri with Peggy Patrick on the second half of the group’s CD released in 2002 during PIAF. In 2017, Ms. Thomas' work created during the Jirrawun era was featured in a special exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia during the TARNANTHI festival the same eight panel Gemerre series was later featured in RAFT Artspace's special duo show, featuring her works and those of Peggy Patrick in Alice Springs (in June 2018). Booljoon later created a beautiful painting reminiscing her sisters who were stolen from their birth country and placed in Wyndham, in a painting entitled "My Stolen Sisters from Gija Country," which was a finalist in the Art Gallery of NSW's 2018 Wynne Prize. The great artist attended her last Warmun artist weekly Tuesday meeting on Tuesday 30th October 2018, where she enjoyed the special birthday cake marking the 20th Anniversary of Warmun Art Centre with some fellow artists and friends. She passed away peacefully at Kununurra Hospital on Monday Nov 5th 2018 in the late afternoon. 3 Phyllis Thomas Untitled, 80x80 cm / Natural ochre and pigment on canvas $3,500.00 Catalogue #: 559/14 © Courtesy and Copyright Warmun Art Centre 4 Rammey Ramsey Rammey Ramsey, a senior Gija man of Jungurra skin, was born on Old Greenvale Station which is now part of Bow River Station. His own country and that of his parents is a part of Gija country in an area to the west of Bedford Downs near Elgee Cliffs. His Gija name, Warlawoon is the general name for the whole of that area of country. Rammey Ramsey lived in Warlawoon country walking in the bush with his family when very young then moved to Bedford Downs and worked there as a young man. He spent some time working at Landsdowne Station. He then moved to Bow River Station and has lived there ever since. Ramsey began painting for Jirrawun Arts in 2000. In October 2000 his pictures were part of an exhibition with Hector Jandany, Timmy Timms and Paddy Bedford at William Mora Galleries in Melbourne called Gaagembi ' Poor Things’. The title of that show being a word used as a term of endearment, sympathy and sorrow. It is a word used by many people to express feelings about the country that is mostly lost to them, their predecessors who walked in it freely and the way of life that is gone. Ramsey was one of the painters featured in the ‘Four Men Paintings’ exhibition at Raft Galleries in Darwin in March 2001. This was followed by a sell out show solo show at Raft during May 2001. Rammey was a key figure in the production of the Bedford Downs massacre Joonba (coroborree) that was staged at the 2000 Telstra Art Award. He is an inspired dancer who helped train the young boys in dancing. He and Rusty Peters made the dance poles used in the original Joonba. He was also an actor and dancer with the Neminuwarlin Performance Group in its production of Fire, Fire Burning Bright, Incorporating the Joonba which premiered at the Perth International Festival of the Arts in February 2002 and opened the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts at the State Theatre of Victoria from 17-20 October 2002. Rammey Ramsey is true to his law painting only country that he has rights to through birth and family. Most of his paintings are of the stunning gorge country north west of Halls Creek in an area surrounding Elgee Cliffs. He shows the places where the Rock Wallaby live and camping areas near waterholes. The painting and the man are the essence of strength and tenderness. The paint is applied with love and vigour, the dots like pearls stitched on a bed of pink and black raw silk. Images of cliffs, hills, rock wallaby holes, camping places, rivers, rocks in the river bed, waterholes, roads, stockyards and meeting places appear as distinctions of important features of the landscape. A line might be a road or a river, a circle a waterhole, a place or a cave, a rectangle stock yards or hills. 5 Rammey Ramsey cont. In painting in the exhibition entitled ‘Deeper than paint on canvas’ at William Mora Galleries the artist has evolved the dynamics of his artistic language. Red paint that once surrounded the black representational forms of hills, rivers and stockyards are now atmospheric fields that move in degrees from white pink and red. The artist observing his great friend Paddy Bedford painting, commented one morning that he wished to paint the Ngarranggarni way - meaning in technical terms the mixing of wet in wet two colours on the surface of the canvas to create the gestural strokes and rhythm of the brush - spiritually a way to represent the four elements of life, earth, wind, fire and water. These new painting are not the usual representations of country but are an important development in Gija art because they also convey the language of natural elements, so crucial in Aboriginal communication and foreseeing of events. In the painting, ‘Elgee Cliffs horse branding iron’ an arabesque shape representing a branding iron flats in a field of wind and dust as though the iron conjures a vision of bullocks, kicking up a cloud of Kimberley dust.