Nicolas Rothwell for The Australian reports:
JUST as the passing of desert artist Darby Jampijinpa Ross in 2005 possessed a certain elegance, the day after he received a congratulatory telegram from the Queen for his 100th birthday, so the first retrospective of his painting career boasts a formal shape and beauty all its own.
Darby Jampijinpa Ross
Lovingly assembled by Simon Wright, director of the Dell Gallery at the Queensland College of Art, and on view from next month at the Araluen Centre in Alice Springs, Darby Jampijinpa Ross: Make it Good for the People presents not just the details of a life in art but the broad lines of a distinctive desert way of thought. For Darby, one of the best known traditional Aboriginal leaders of the past generation, a key figure in the Warlpiri community of Yuendumu, emerges from this exhibition as a philosopher and painter of the first order, a man who felt a special urge to communicate his culture through his art.
