While the Dutton Coalition has done its best to ignore or denigrate the Indigenous in its election campaign, the Art Gallery of NSW under new Director, Maud Page, has done its utmost to appreciate Indigenous culture with record numbers of both artists and portrait subjects in this year’s hang of the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes.
Western Arrernte and Yankunytjatjara man Robert Fielding from Mimili Maku Arts is hung in all three prizes. And his entry in the Wynne, ‘Graveyards in between’ has a dark solemnity and political resonance that reminded me of Sally Morgan’s important print showing layers of Black bodies beneath the sunny surface of Rottnest Island. In all, 19 of the 52 finalists in the Wynne are First Nations artists – ranging from old men like Alec Baker and Eric Barney from Iwantja to the hot young ceramicist from Adelaide, Alfred Lowe. In fact, in what I call the Ramesh Effect after Ramesh Nithiyendran, the Wynne is crowded with 3D works – a legitimate part of its bifurcated commission covering landscape and figurative sculpture – most of them ceramic.
Many an Indigenous canvas, though, is simply the well-executed norm of that artist. Exceptions would have to be George Cooley’s bold work from the newish Cooper Pedy art centre, Nyunmiti Burton’s ‘Seven Sisters’ in deliciously muted colours, and Elizabeth Kunoth Kngwarreye’s fantastically detailed ‘Yam seeds’. Meanwhile, Lorna Napanangka has borrowed Emily Kngwarreye’s Colourist palette in a work that’s reminiscent of the $1.196m work that sold recently at the March Deutscher & Hackett auction.
And I note that both Cooley and Kngwarreye have been selected as finalists in the $100,000 Hadleys landscape prize in Tasmania!
Of course, Mr Hot, Vincent Namatjira appears in both Archibald (which he’s won before) and the Wynne. He stands a better chance in the latter, I suspect, borrowing Great-Grandfather Albert’s Country to foreground his new totem, ‘King Dingo’ – a powerful image created by what might be the dog’s own claw scratchings. Cleverly, the Archie curator Beatrice Grailton has hung Adrian Jangala Robinson’s striking portrait of film-director Warwick Thornton next to Clara Adolph’s less-interesting portrait of Robinson. There are six First Nations artists in all – surely a record for the Archie – and ten Aboriginal subjects out of the 57 hung. Well over the 4% Indigenous proportion of our population.
Of course, I’ve no idea what will win the coveted Archibald – though it’s almost certainly not Abdul Abdullah’s image of Jason Phu as the Lone Ranger in an Asian mountain-scape. For that took out the Packers’ Prize, usually a curse in the eyes of the Gallery Trustees who make their choice next Friday. But, as Abdullah pointed out, the days of the AGNSW packers being heavy-handed men of toil is long gone. Many are artists themselves today, including their chief who announced the win, Boston-born Alexis Wildman. However I took passing note of David Fairburn’s work, and that of Brittany Jones, Fiona Lowry and Marcus Wills. But I don’t see why Adrian Jangala Robinson wouldn’t be in with a chance.
One mention of the strange Sulman Prize for genre paintings, whatever that is. Robert Fielding’s amazing son, Zaacharaiha, has a bold and bright classic APY painting selected, but it’s the caption, ‘The scandal – naganalu tjalmilanu (who sold out)?’ that caught my eye. Could this be a reference to the APY Art Centre Collective outrage that rumbles on still over alleged ‘White hands on Black art’? The answer probably lies in the artwork’s Pitjanjatjara text!
There was a refreshing introduction to today’s event from the Gallery’s first female Director, Maud Page, who enlivened her talk with several perceptive references to the art on show, delighted in the first ever majority of women finalists over the three prizes, noted a prevailing mood of humour to cope with the world and ourselves, and was presumably involved in the decision to hang the Young Archie (selected by artist Jumaadi from an incredible 3200+ entries!) for artists 5 to 18 in the Gallery’s main foyer, to be enjoyed for free.
