ReDot Fine Art Gallery is extremely honoured to be inaugurating our stunning new space at the Old Hill Street Police Station with an equally stunning solo exhibition of works by the hugely talented Imelda Yukenbarri Gugaman. Coming from a rich family of artists, she is the eldest daughter of the highly acclaimed and accomplished painter Lucy Yukenbarri (deceased) and the world renowned Helicopter Tjungarrayi - not only a highly collectable artist in his own right, but famous for his exploits as a child when found almost starving in the desert by patrol workers, and one of the most senior law-men of the Northern-Central Deserts of Australia.
Imelda grew up a quiet and shy girl living in the dormitories at the Balgo Mission for a number of years, looked after by the nuns and she retains fond memories of this time along with a very strong sense of religion and family values. After attending the government school at Balgo until 1969, Imelda lived for a while in Beagle Bay where she met her husband. They started a family and after their second child they moved back to Balgo where they had 2 more children before his passing.
Imelda spent a lot of time with her mother when she was young and every weekend would paint alongside her, learning her Tjukurpa (dreamtime) and the ways of Indigenous culture. Her mother would explain the importance of passing on the stories they were painting and instilled into Imelda the need to pass them onto her children, and grandchildren, which she continues to do.
Despite the pressure of living up to very accomplished artists within her family, Imelda has proudly carried on the legacy of the painting style and stories of her mother, to which this body of work attests, yet has found a very appealing and unique style of her own in the process.
Winpurpurla, the place that Imelda calls “home”, is the first ever solo show for this talented artist. The works are an amazing affirmation of her painterly pointillism style, allowing the viewer into a very remote landscape of Indigenous Australia, creating meandering, three dimensional topographical maps of the soakage waterhole sites of her beloved country.
Imelda has travelled around Australia and overseas with her art, and recently travelled to Melbourne to attend the opening of “Warlayirti: The Art of Balgo” and dance with other Balgo artists at the National Gallery of Victoria in St Kilda. She was also one of the artists who travelled to Tokyo, Japan in 2010 for one of Warlayirti’s largest ever shows.
The exhibition begins on Wednesday, 5th August and runs until Saturday, 12th September 2015 and will be attended in person by Imelda, in what will be her first ever trip to Singapore. A must-see show for anyone interested in following the recent developments in Indigenous Art and an opportunity to meet a beautiful and talented proponent of one of the world’s oldest art forms.
