Kumantje Jagamara and Imants Tillers collaborate on ‘Metafisica Australe’

Warlpiri/Luritja artist Kumantje (Michael Nelson) Jagamara AM and Imants Tillers have collaborated on 24 artworks together since 2001, and the latest of these, the striking 72-panel painting Metafisica Australe 2017 (illustrated). The expansive and compelling work holds special meaning, as it reflects on how the artists embarked on a working relationship that developed following Tillers’s…

The Coming of the Light

The Coming of the Light is a significant work by Gordon Bennett (1955–2014), one of Australia’s most influential contemporary artists. Bennett addresses Australian history as it has come to be represented and asks how it might accommodate new voices. The writing is on the wall, portent is thick in the air. In a corner, the surface…

Measures of Distance

The exhibition ‘Measures of Distance’ highlights how artists reference the body and ritual through strategies of seriality and repetition. By juxtaposing artworks from diverse eras, cultures and styles, the exhibition opens up new interpretations and points of view. The order is not rationalistic and underlying, but is simply order, like that of continuity, one thing…

Amata painters: Western Desert painting movement

Amata community is located in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) lands in north-western South Australia. In the 1970s, Amata women were encouraged to learn batik, natural dyeing, spinning, weaving and leatherwork techniques. Minymaku Arts (meaning ‘belonging to women’) was set up in 1997, but in 2005 the centre was renamed Tjala Arts, with both men…

William Robinson deconstructs ‘Rainforest and mist in afternoon light’

The monumental work Rainforest and mist in afternoon light 2002 by esteemed Queensland painter William Robinson depicts the Springbrook landscape, part of Queensland’s Gold Coast Hinterland, where Robinson’s studio was situated at the time. The artist spoke to QAGOMA Director Chris Saines in his home studio in suburban Brisbane. CHRIS SAINES | You’ve painted a number…

An enduring art tradition: The Hermannsburg School

The Hermannsburg School is an art movement that began at the Lutheran mission of Hermannsburg in Central Australia in the 1930s, inspired by Arrernte artist Albert Namatjira who was born there. Following Namatjira’s early sell-out exhibitions, members of his extended family and his community – most of whom were already making art in some form – became interested in…