National NAIDOC Week celebrations - Artist Feature Week

This work is a study of an old Aboriginal woman who visited the Central Gallery during the 2013 Revealed exhibition of WA Aboriginal communities.

North Metropolitan TAFE Art Collection

Simone Penny completed an Advanced Diploma in Art and Design (Visual Art) at Central TAFE (now North Metropolitan TAFE) in 2003. 

She went on to get a degree from Curtin University and currently works as a mentor in Koolark, the Aboriginal Support Unit at North Metropolitan TAFE.

This experimental digital piece demonstrates his ongoing search for his identity and was acquired from Gallery Central’s 2019 Naidoc show I see you, I hear you.

North Metropolitan TAFE Art Collection

Darren Stockwell is an Aboriginal man who comes from the Waradjuri tribes of NSW, a descendant of the Bogan River people.

He graduated from CMTAFE with an Advanced Diploma in Fine Art in 2016.

Kate is a Yindjibarndi woman however her connection to her heritage was disrupted by her mother’s removal and adoption in the late 60s.

This is a subject which features in all of her artwork including her 2015-piece ‘Pilbara’.

Katie’s journey to reconnect with her heritage is coupled with an interest in the mechanisms that create social change, and a desire to challenge the myths revolving around Australia’s national identity through art.

Katie West grew up in the Midwest and now lives in Perth. She completed a BA (Visual Art) at ECU in 2009 and a sociology degree at Murdoch University in 2013.
She is a Yindjibarndi woman but her connection to her heritage was disrupted by her mother’s removal and adoption in the late 60s, a subject which features in her work. West’s journey to reconnect with her heritage is coupled with an interest in the mechanisms that create social change, and a desire to challenge the myths revolving around Australia’s national identity.

Icon to a stolen child : Stella

North Metropolitan TAFE Art Collection

Nostalgia

This painting is from a photograph taken by Dr C P Mountford for his book The Aborigines and Their Country… an early account for non-Indigenous readers about Aboriginal lifestyles on the Arnhem and Melville Island homelands during the 1950s.

I received the book from my sister who has over many years collected antiquated colonial nostalgia to highlight the paternal gaze of the dominant culture in Australia.

The title of this painting uses three conceptual references to the term nostalgia. The first relates to the psychological condition experienced by front line troops…during World War One (and) was invented by psychologists to describe the strong feelings their patients experienced and was used to prevent (them) from being killed by firing squad.

The second concept in popular English usage is (about) a longing for an idealised past.

Then finally I heard the Noongar story about the impact of colonisation upon the practice of gathering native yams, which was practised throughout the southwest of Western Australia…about how colonialism crushed a food gathering tradition perfected over many generations. 

When the first colonists came to this country, they coveted the well-tilled soils used by the Noongars (as) perfect for growing hops and vines. When (they) came across large groups of women and children digging for yams, they would disperse them with guns, rip all the yam plants out and plant their crops for making grog.

I struggle not to have nostalgia for digging yams with my sisters and see the irony that alcohol is now the poison we deal with as a community.

Symbols
Bottom central: three symbols of conjoined waterholes.
Centre top: extended across in red glitter, water course symbols.
Throughout the painting are bush tracks of waitch (emu) running from all the waterholes.

North Metropolitan TAFE Art Collection

Julie Dowling completed a Diploma of Fine Art at Claremont School of Art in 1989, a Bachelor of Fine Art at Curtin University in 1992 and an Associate Diploma in Visual Arts Management at Central Institute of Technology in 1995.

She has exhibited regularly in Perth, in most Australian states and also in Germany in 1999 and her work is represented in numerous public and private collections.

Amongst her awards are the 2000 Mandorla Prize for Religious Art and the 17th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award (Painting), and she has twice been a finalist of the Archibald Portrait Prize in 2001 and 2002.

In those years she was also included in the Australian Art Collector's list of Australia's 50 most collectable artists, topping the list in 2002 and being included again in 2005.

Julie is Aboriginal through her matrilineal line and much of her art is concerned with the struggles of the stolen generations and their desperate search for identity and belonging.

This work refers to the Dreamtime story of the Charnock woman, a tall evil spirit woman who collected small spirit children in her long white hair. Crossing the Swan River, she left her footprint at Blackwall Reach and then headed north to the lakes created by the Waugul, including Lake Joondalup (place of ‘the long white hair’ or ‘the water that glistens’). The elders then retaliated by turning themselves into Koolbardis (magpies) and picked the children from her hair. Hitting the ground, they turned to stone and she left a trail of these behind her leading to the largest stone, Kartakitch (Wave Rock), from which she was lifted into the sky, never to return. Today her hair is seen as the Milky Way and the stars are her spirit children.

Seeing similarities between this story and his mother and siblings’ experiences at being taken by the police and placed at Sister Kate’s, Chris decided to paint a more contemporary narrative of the Charnock Woman, employing previously used references from Alice in Wonderland as an analogy of the early occupation of Nyoongar land.

The dark room reflects both Lewis Carroll’s visits to mental asylums as inspiration for his book, as well as the institutionalisation of Indigenous children. Its interior walls are adorned by Victorian floral wallpaper which placed indigenous plants 
within a repeating mathematical grid.

The grinning Cheshire Cat represents the misleading deception of the authorities while the porcelain doll depicts not just the fragility of youth but also a staring expressionless face or mask used for social events but emotionally detached.

Over the top of the painting is a rough drawing of his family totem, the Warlit 
(wedge tailed eagle) which serves as an overarching emblem of protection.

North Metropolitan TAFE Art Collection
Donated by the artist via the Commonwealth Government’s Cultural Gifts Program

Christopher Pease graduated from TAFE in Art & Design in 1998, completed 
a Fine Art degree at Curtin University, and then returned to teach Graphic Design at TAFE from 2009–2013.

Christopher is now a leading WA contemporary Aboriginal artist whose works challenge the realities of colonisation and appropriation, which have resulted in the loss of Aboriginal traditional land and culture. The son of Sandra Hill, his works also echo her and others’ grief at being ‘taken away’ from their parents and reared in European institutions, with some still struggling to be reunited with their families.

Julie Dowling completed a Diploma of Fine Art at Claremont School of Art in 1989, a Bachelor of Fine Art at Curtin University in 1992 and an Associate Diploma in Visual Arts Management at Central Institute of Technology in 1995.

She has exhibited regularly in Perth, in most Australian states and also in Germany in 1999 and her work is represented in numerous public and private collections.

Amongst her awards are the 2000 Mandorla Prize for Religious Art and the 17th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award (Painting), and she has twice been a finalist of the Archibald Portrait Prize in 2001 and 2002.

In those years she was also included in the Australian Art Collector's list of Australia's 50 most collectable artists, topping the list in 2002 and being included again in 2005.

Julie is Aboriginal through her matrilineal line and much of her art is concerned with the struggles of the stolen generations and their desperate search for identity and belonging.

Woor-jall-luk the Yorgah with the long white hair, her hair can be seen any time at night as the Milky Way. The Hydes Star Cluster, also known as Taurus. Is Woor-jall-luk's Kaunt. (Home camp fire).

A long way back in the dream time Woor-jall-luk visited Earth-The Bibbullmun Dreaming states that Woor-jall-luk introduced oxygen to the Boodjarr.

On one occasion she walked from Joondalup to East Perth.
As she walked on this sacred journey, she left holes in the Boodjarr where her feet made footprints imbedded in the soil of Bibbullmun Boodjarr.

Over the Dreaming years they became Water holes that were used by the many creatures that came about because of the oxygen in the atmosphere. These water holes also became a Sacred Dreaming Path. The walk was to celebrate the air that was made for the humans to breath.

It is said the sacred walk of the path were carried out by the Yogah's of the Bibbullmun Boodjarr every three years. The Lakes are represented here by the twelve Granite Rocks.

The walk ended with the rituals and ceremonies of the Yorgah with the long White Hair being acted out in Kings Park.

A Bibbulmun elder, artist and historian, Toogarr has been instrumental in the documentation of Aboriginal Dreamtime stories, and the promotion and explanation of these stories through his artwork. He was the first Aboriginal person to be given a contract for public art in Western Australia, and since that time, has designed and installed public art projects throughout the State.

In 1998, Toogarr was named Western Australian Aboriginal Artist of the Year. Toogarr has also been involved in art since he was a child, and further enhanced his skills by completing a degree in Visual Arts at Curtin University and Edith Cowan University in 2003. Toogarr has also received his Masters Degree in Visual Arts from Edith Cowan University in 2006.