Colour Power 22

Colour Power 22 is showing at JGM Gallery until the 17th of September. The exhibition focuses primarily on an aesthetic and palette that evolved from Aboriginal Australians first encounter with acrylic paint in the 1960s. These vibrant colours differed markedly from the traditional earthy tones and natural ochres that had, until that moment, largely defined the aesthetic of Aboriginal Art. This expansion of the palette extended their already vast conceptual horizons, allowing them to more viscerally convey "country".

 

 

Painted in 2020, Ngura (Country) is an archetypal work by Eric Barney Mungi Kumanara, composed with a patchwork of pinks, oranges and reds with a grid of double rings laid across the surface. The squarish shapes are perhaps suggestive of the way Barney views his natural surroundings in Yankunytjatjara Country in the northwest of South Australia. Amidst the ostensibly unmanageable surroundings of the “outback”, Barney sees an orderly arrangement of the natural resources that have sustained his people (Anangu) for generations. 

 

The black and white double rings represent "tjukula" (water sources). By emphasizing the intensity of the reds and oranges that surround them, Barney conveys a sense of intense heat and, by extension, stresses the importance of the "tjukula". Masterfully, he has used an apparently simple arrangement of three colours and two shapes to communicate his knowledge of Yankunytjatjara Country and why that knowledge is so vital. 

 

Much like Barney’s work, there is an intense sense of heat conveyed in Mawukura Jimmy Nerrimah’s painting, Millinjinang & Willi. All three stages of burning are denoted by the palette: incipient yellow, fiery red and charred blackness. This is intensified by the wavy contours of the shapes, almost as if we were viewing this image through a haze of sweltering heat. There is also a distinct sense of space expanding and contracting, perhaps because of this heat. Squares condense more and more until, at the centre, they transform into a circle. These circles are in fact "jila" and, like the "tjukula" in Barney's work, they represent waterholes. Their elemental juxtaposition to the heat lends the image an alchemical quality and a sense of geographical transformation.

 

Nerrimah's early life may help to further contextualize this work. Much of his adolescence was spent evading drought and bushfires and the "jila" sustained him and his family through many of these disasters. These "jila", then, may also signify the communities Mawukura travelled with, while the squares perhaps represent the fire and heat that constantly pursued them.

 

One of the few sculptures in Colour Power 22 is Luke Djalagarrarra’s Bird Carving II, an elongated piece of carved wood, adorned with bright reds, yellows, blues and whites. What we first perceive is the simplicity of the figuration. As a silhouette, the sculpture would more closely resemble a didgeridoo than the figure of a bird. However, with very subtle curves and a carved hook at the top, Djalagarrarra represents wings and a beak. This innovative sense of design is typical of artists from Ngukurr, where Djalagarrarra lives and works. 

 

Decorating the bird with hatched reds, yellows and whites in the style of a lower garment, Djalagarrarra anthropomorphises the creature, conveying a very human, perhaps ancestral, presence. The hatching has another conceptual function. Much like Barney’s work, the representation of nature (or a natural creature) with meticulous geometry imbues the painting with a sense of order and interconnectedness.  

 

For a full catalogue of works and any enquiries, please contact info@jgmgallery.com.