Mesmerizing Canvasses Resonate with Spirit of Great Sandy Desert

Jimmy Nerrimah ( Mulgara) Exhibits at Coo-ee Bondi Beach
13 November at 6am

Jimmy Nerrimah (Mulgara), who is counted amongst the most revered artists from the Fitzroy Crossing area of North Western Australia, grew up in the same Great Sandy Desert region as Rover Thomas. Despite their separate journeys, their lives and art share many parallels. Both worked until their senior years as Kimberley cowboys and while the paintings of both these renowned artists could be described as minimalist representations of landscape Mulgara's brilliantly colourful and powerfully resonant mesmeric images, differ starkly in texture and appeal from Rover's equally powerful yet fluid, muted ochre paintings

Rover died in 1998 leaving behind an artistic legacy of incalculable value while Mulgara, who began painting much later, has gone on to exhibit in highly successful and acclaimed sellout shows, in Perth and Sydney since that time.

A solo exhibition of his current works, collected by the Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency, will be launched at Coo-ee, Bondi Beach on Tuesday 13 November at 6 pm. and the artist and his family will attend the opening. The new home for Coo-ee (relocated from Oxford Street and now open only by appointment) is just a stone throw from the Bondi Icebergs.

Director of Coo-ee Adrian Newstead comments: " This is such an important show for Mulgara as it is now three years since his solo works have been seen in Sydney. Mulgara was one of the senior artists from Fitzroy Crossing whose collaborative Ngurrara canvas, originally produced to support the Warlmajarri land claim, sold in this years' Sotheby's July sale for over $200,000."

Mulgara's country is around Wayampajarti a Jila (permanent waterhole) in the northwestern area of Western Australia's Great Sandy Desert. The eight main waterholes in his country, around which his early nomadic life revolved, are key to an understanding of his work. These sites are central to the ceremonial stories sung, danced and painted on to bodies when re-enacting ancestral journeys through Warlmajarri land and affirming the participant's spiritual relationship with it.

Mulgara's abstracted images on canvas refer to his history and that of his land. They resonate powerfully with an energy that vividly captures important features of landscape around the Great Sandy Desert where he was born. Exciting visually, Mulgara's work has an instant appeal because of its powerful simplicity and his bold use of linear abstraction on fields of blue, red, green or brown. In contrasting colours, lines move in mesmeric waves across the canvas as either pulsating circles within circles or angular meanderings in an interlocking key design. Seemingly decorative, but for a precise symbolic purpose, lines are edged with a perimeter of carefully painted dots which render the image with a brilliance, associated amongst the Warlmajarri with good health and vitality.

(The key design is a traditional symbolic form thought to have been introduced to the Western Australia by Indonesians seafarers - there has also been speculation that the design derived form Bronze Age ceramics from the Celebes or ancient Chinese ceramics).

Many of the current works are about specific waterholes instantly recognizable to other members of his language group who, according to the Mangkaja art coordinator Ken Ford, "become quite animated when they look at them." The stories, provided as narratives from the artist which accompany each work, relate esoteric elements of the mythological creation story, their significance in contemporary life, and Warlmajarri law as it pertains to peoples conduct when visiting the site. This includes cultural taboos associated with specific places -for example you may only drink from one of the waterholes depicted, or at another, from only one side of the waterhole. Sometimes the waterhole will be identified as 'living water' or "tinjki". This means the waterhole is a spring and supplies water all year round, a fact which makes it of great importance for ceremony and survival. Sometimes it is described as a soak - a temporary water supply that comes after rains. In other paintings Mulgara describes the wavy patternings as "the marks the wind makes on the sand."

Evoking Dreamtime stories, he speaks in one narrative of a place where "There was a man who then became a bird " while in another he tells of a man who was at the water hole making clapping sticks but who didn't drink the water. References to animals are rare except for the mention of snakes that live in waterholes and travel underground from one to another. At times he explains his association with the site and the importance his activities there. "we have sung and danced here to keep the water strong".

Mulgara grew up at a time when traditional life was nomadic and days were spent hunting, socializing and undertaking important ceremonies to nurture the relationship with his land. Houses were typically bark, constructed as temporary shelters around campsites. Ceremony meant dancing, singing and painting. Undertaking rituals that would strengthen his relationship with the land and his ancestors spirits of the Dreaming and so ensure its wellbeing and his, and his family's, survival.

Nowadays Mulgara resides with his close family in a house in the small aboriginal settlement of Loomah, about 200 kms from Derby and some 600 kilometres from the Great Sandy Desert. He visits there regularly, taking his Range Rover to hunt and undertake ceremony. He keeps a collection of spears, each for a specific task, in the top branches of a large tree outside his home where the young children cannot reach them.

Nerrimah started painting about 10 years ago. Most good artists in his region are Elders. With age they gain status and the privilege within their language group to paint and do things that younger artists are not permitted. It is this status within their language group which gives their work importance to the community and increasingly to westerners. A lot of his time today is devoted to his responsibility as an Elder in the community, particularly as a peacekeeper. He is regularly called in to mediate and help with tribal disputes.

Mulgara's works are in the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of Western Australia. His works are held in the collections of Sir James and Lady Cruthers, Artbank, Westfarmers Ltd., Ian & Sue Bernadt, Levy Kaplan Collection (Seattle) USA, Thomas Vroom Collection (Amsterdam), and private collections in Germany, UK and Australia.

For more information please contact:
Marie Geissler
Geissler Communications
T 9380 5510