ReDot Fine Art Gallery is honoured to host an exhibition hailing from one the most important community art centres of the Modern Contemporary Aboriginal Art movement. Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency is not only one of the oldest established art centres in the Kimberley region of Australia, the heart of the North-Western Aboriginal Art movement, but also boasts some of the most renowned protagonists of this art form.

The artists of this community are renowned for their uninhibited style and lively use of colour, painting images of country that share stories of culture and identity and over the years it has produced some of Australia’s most important Aboriginal painters and with the art centres 20th anniversary looming it was imperative that “something special” be proposed to acknowledge this landmark community’s involvement in the development of the Modern Aboriginal Art Movement.

Imagine the surprise when the current art coordinator at Mangkaja Arts, Guy Hayes, called us in Singapore to reveal with excitement the unearthing of a significant body of work on paper from the early 1990’s by three important founding artists of the community, which had been locked away in storage and previously unseen by anyone outside the community.

As to why it is that so many of these works remained un-catalogued over the years will remain a mystery but we are delighted to be able to celebrate their 20th anniversary by exhibiting these previously unseen gems.

This beautiful and simplistic body of work comprises of three of the late founding members of Mangkaja Arts, Wankurta Peanut Ford, Yata Gypsy Yadda, and Wakartu Cory Surprise. All three of these strong Walmajarri women began painting in the late eighties through the Karrayili Adult Education Centre, and participated in the landmark exhibition “Karrayili” which was held in 1991 at Tandanya National Aboriginal Institute in South Australia where some of the sister works to this show were displayed and bought extensively by museum collections across Australia.

It is only fitting that in the 20th year of the incorporation of the current art centre that Mangkaja are embarking on a significant international show and will be exhibiting works which demonstrate the raw strength of the selected artists work from the early days of the art centre. It is also poignant that these seminal acrylic works on paper will be seen for the first time; more than 20 years after “Karrayili” were exhibited to mark the launch of this pivotal art cooperative.

Image: © ReDot Gallery