The ReDot gallery is proud to welcome the 1st Singaporean show for the powerful and colourful works of the Bentinck Island Art Gang.
“Ngalla marraaju wuuju dulka kilwanmaruthu/we’ll show you our country” will showcase the very best from this group of the Kaiadilt women painting on Mornington Island.
These days fewer than 10 people can speak their original language. The art movement that brought life back to these people started in 2005 when Sally Gabori, then 80 years old, wandered into the Mornington Island Arts
and Craft centre and picked up a brush. The Kaiadilt had no tradition of painting but what came from her hands was an overflow of talent in blocks of bright colour, bold combination of pinks and oranges, blues and reds, white
and black.
Sally was shortly followed by May Moodoonuthi, Dawn Naranatjil, Paula Paul, Netta Loogatha, Ethel Thomas and Amy Loogatha. All somehow related by blood, language and by the experience of the life in the low lands of the
nearby island. They all have distinctive styles but the themes are common: the salt pans, mangroves, mussels, oysters, fish traps, shells and sand from the casuarinas lined beaches and the ceremonial scars made when someone related dies. Today most of them return to their original land, Bentinck, during the dry season and about 15
people live permanently on the island.
ReDot is very proud to be the 1st gallery in Asia to exhibit these beautiful works and continue to mission of bringing the newest, most innovative, colourful new Aboriginal art works from the Australian outback.
