The Papunya settlement 240 km northwest of Alice Springs (Mparntwe), was established during the 1960s as an administrative centre for forcibly resettled Pintupi, Luritja, Walpiri, Arrernte, and Anmatyerre peoples whose homelands covered almost one-third of the Australian continent. The Western Desert is by many considered the birthplace of the modern Aboriginal art movement - usually referring to the style many define as ‘dot painting’. It was in Papunya that the first group of Pintupi elders began using acrylic paint to record aspects of their culture on canvas in the early 1970s. During the following decade, the homelands movement saw many Pintupi and Luritja people move back to their homelands and continue their strong ceremonial tie to the Land. As they did so, numerous art centres were established throughout the Central and Western desert regions. The Papunya painting style derives directly from the artists’ knowledge of traditional body and sand painting associated with ceremony. As the artists portrayed their Dreamtime creation stories for the public, they removed or concealed their most sacred symbols, carefully monitoring their ancestral designs in order to protect the sacred knowledge encoded in their art.

(1924c. - 2011) Language: Wangkajunga Region: Kimberley Community: Fitzroy Crossing Art Centre: Mangkaja Arts Outstation: Kukapunyu Senior law woman Nyuju Stumpy Brown was a custodian for ancestral lands at Ngapawarlu, in the Great Sandy Desert. Nyuju was the sister of Rover Thomas and was born at Kukapanyu (Well 39), she grew up in the desert but eventually followed the drovers north along the stock route to Balgo mission with her uncle, Jamili, a stockman. Nyuju later moved to Fitzroy Crossing. During an art career that spanned from the 1980s until 2008, she recreated the desert sites that she knew from her childhood, focusing on the Dreaming stories that belong to Ngapawarlu, Warrawarra, Jirntijirnti and other water sites along the Canning Stock Route. “Trees all around - hide that waterhole" My country - Ngupawarlu. Near Canning Stock Route. Living water, but salty one. You can drink him cold time, but not when he's hot - gets too salty. One woman been travelling in Dreamtime. Whole lot of women travelling, stop at that place Ngupawarlu. They travelling on law business. Big mob - going Alice Springs way. Trees all around - hide that waterhole. Then sandhill, jilji country all around. Like a big lake, trees grow inside lake. You can drink from side of lake - too salty in middle of lake. NYUJU STUMPY BROWN NGUPAWARLU,  2005 100 x 145 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas $8,000 PROVENANCE Japingka Gallery, WA Private Collection, NSW

220 page hard cover coffee table book telling the lost histories, Ceremonies and Culture through Art Konstantina is a proud Gadigal, woman and artist. She is a multi-award winning, nationally and globally represented artist who is painting her Gadigal people back into the narrative of Sydney’s history. Her work, whilst predominantly focused on her brand of contemporary fine-art dot-painting on linen, does span other disciplines such as wood carving, block-printing, writing and illustrating. This retrospective covering the past 7 years of her painting Country is an ode to the Gadigal of Sydney. These honourable, graceful and truly inspirational people who’s stories are the backbone and lifeblood of Konstantina’s works. The Gadigal language is used throughout this book in attempt to share the stories with the use of the traditional language. This is a passion for Konstantina who is one of a few a speakers of this language with her sons. This collection of contemporary and traditional stories have made their way to the artist by many means. Yarns with Elders, Academics, Historians, Ethnographers and other authors, along with thousands of hours in libraries and archives across Australia and the UK. These stories have had a way of grabbing hold of the artist, and informing her practise in a way that is visceral. The feeling the audience has and the connection to Konstantina and her stories is nothing short of incredible. She is able to convey such strong Cultural and Political messages, some of which are truly ugly and others, utterly spectacular; but all of them are beautiful and necessary. This book is important. These stories are important. This artwork is important. They give voice to a people, the Gadigal people of Sydney.

“When I paint, it’s like inma (ceremonial dance and song)." "This is Antara, a sacred place for Anangu, and the Maku Tjukurpa (witchetty grub story). There is a special rock hole at Antara where women perform inma – ‘inmaku pakani’ – and afterwards there is enough maku to feed everyone. Antara and Maku Tjukurpa are really important for Mimili women, we paint this place and its stories, keeping them strong.” Tuppy lives in Mimili Community, home to 300 Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara people who have been living in the area for millennia in harmony with nature and acting as custodians of the land and the Tjukurpa (creation stories). Mimili was formerly known as Everard Park, which was a cattle station that was returned to Aboriginal ownership through the 1981 AP Lands Act. Mimili Community was incorporated as an Aboriginal Community in 1975. © The Artist and Mimili Maku TUPPY NGINTJA GOODWIN ANTARA, 2020 152 x 122 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $10,000 PROVENANCE Mimili Maku Arts, SA Cat No. MMK01 Araluen Art Centre, Desert Mob, 2020, Alice Springs, NT Cooee Art Leven, NSW

Billy Benn Perrurle was born in the Harts Range, 200 km northeast of Alice Springs. As a young man, he worked in the local mine and learned to paint from a miner's wife, who had been a Chinese watercolourist. Later when he began painting professionally, the influence of Chinese painting traditions was reflected in the scale and perspective of his artworks and their self-assured brushstrokes. Though he painted with acrylics, the colours were arranged like a classic watercolour palette. These were applied as washes before thicker impasto paint was added. Soft pinks, golden yellows, bright oranges, velvet purples, and deep browns were used to create landforms and features. He whipped up skies and laid down slopes and escarpments with fluid single movements. Billy Benn’s art has often been critically located outside of the art world category of fine art. Journalist Nicholas Rothwell was one of many writers to refer to him as an outsider artist, a status conferred due to his stylistically naive approach, his mental condition, and the fact that he was characterised as ‘lost between worlds’. Per Bindi Mwerre Anthurre Artists: Established in 2000, the Bindi Mwerre Anthurre Artists studio is the first in Australia to occupy the intersection between supported studios and Aboriginal Art Centres. [...] The Mwerre Anthurre Artists developed out of Bindi Enterprises, which was established in 1978 to provide employment and community engagement opportunities to people with disability. In the 1990’s the late Billy Benn Perrurle started his career painting on off-cuts of timber and sheets of metal from the Bindi workshop. From these humble beginnings, the collective grew into an essential and distinctive Aboriginal Art Centre with several artists creating work that is highly sought after by galleries and private collectors alike.

It's a Wrap! Two years after his death, the late Rod Menzies’ collection of Australian Aboriginal art has been sold in its entirety. Menzies’ flirtation with Australian Aboriginal art began in 1999, when he hired Melbourne specialist Vivien Anderson to break into the increasingly lucrative Aboriginal art market that had grown from $715,000 in 1994 to $5.4 million. Anderson held only 2 sales in 1999 and 2000. In 2003 Menzies charged Aboriginal art dealer Adrian Newstead with the task of heading Menzies’ Aboriginal art department. In a self-described audacious move, Newstead widened the range of art on offer, securing works through his extensive dealer network. With Christies and Mossgreen entering the market in 2004, Australian Aboriginal art sales grew from $6.9 million at the start of the millennium to $26.5 million by 2007 with 60% generated through Adrian Newstead’s Menzies, and Tim Klingender’s Sotheby’s, sales. In 2008, with the Global Financial Crisis, Newstead, and Menzies parted ways. The art bubble had burst and several competitors departed the field while others were in decline. The secondary market for Aboriginal art dropped year on year until it reached its’ nadir in 2014 at just $5.7 million. Nine years later in 2017, Cooee Art Auctions debuted, with Newstead and then business partner Mirri Leven at the helm. The venture began with a bang when Emily Kngwarreye’s Earth’s Creation I, sold for $2.1 million. The painting, which set the Australian record price for any Aboriginal artwork in 2017, is still the most valuable painting ever sold by any Australian Female artist. In its first year operating as an auction house Cooee’s sales topped $2.6 million. Leven is now sole owner of the gallery and, going forward, head of the auction house. With the death of Rod Menzies in April 2022, the Menzies heirs agreed to entrust Newstead with the task of disbursing the father’s extensive 240 work Aboriginal art collection. Though he had sold his share of Cooee art to Mirri Leven by February 2023, Newstead remained in his position as head specialist on The Rod Menzies deaccession sales Parts I and II, which were held in November 2023 and March 2024. The sales realised a total of $3 million incl BP with 100% of all lots sold.

(c.1925 - 2016) Born on Mt. Doreen Station, north-west of Alice Springs circa 1925, Judy Watson Napangardi grew up in the vast Warlpiri country that lies between the Tanami and Gibson deserts. Her traditional nomadic life came to an end, however, when the Warlpiri were forced to live in the new government settlement at Yuendumu. Years later, following the birth of her ten children amid great struggles living under European colonisation, the influence of those early years in the land of her ancestors burst forth in her art. Her principal focus was the women’s Dreaming of the Karnta-kurlangu – a large number of ancestral women who danced across the land, creating important sites, discovering plants, foods, and medicines, as well as establishing the ceremonies that would perpetuate their generative powers. At Mina Mina, these ancestral women danced and performed ceremonies before traveling on to Janyinki and other sites as they moved east toward Alcoota. During their ritual dancing, digging sticks rose up out of the ground and the women carried these implements with them on their long journey east, singing and dancing all the way without rest. The hairstring is anointed with red ochre and is a secret and sacred connection between the women’s ceremony and the country, which enables them to connect with the spirit of the Dreaming. The Rod Menzies Estate | Indigenous Art Collection | Auction Part II Cooee Art Leven 17 Thurlow Street Redfern Tuesday 5th March 2024 Below are some of Judy Watson Napangardi's artworks that appear in the Rod Menzies Estate Auction Part II

These works from Buku-Larrnggay Mulka in Yirrkala, North East Arnhem Land, NT are part of the group exhibition 'Game, Set, Match', consisting of seven individual series of artworks by various artists - on view now at our Redfern galleries. This series of artworks showcases a significant shift in the artistic practices of men in the North-Eastern Arnhem region. Championed by Gunybi Ganambarr, known for his innovative techniques, these works signify a departure from traditional materials. Ganambarr sought permission from Elders to incorporate discarded materials from the landscape, challenging the conventional use of natural resources. He positioned that even non-Yolngu waste, like metal and rubber left to decay in the environment, is inherently linked to the land. The approval to engrave sacred designs onto surfaces using these materials altered the customary production protocols within their community and contributed to local waste management. This movement pays tribute to the historical Macassan trading relationships along the Northern Territory coastline, predating colonization. Macassan sailors would establish camps to harvest and process trepang (sea cucumber) for trade, staying for months before returning home. This exchange included gifting tobacco, cloth, and sharing boat and sail construction techniques with the locals. Metal objects such as knives, blades, and axes were crucial trade items, referred to locally as "Murrŋiny" or steel. Story provided by Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre on behalf of the artist, Bandarr Wirrpanda: An understanding of these works relies upon a basic outline of the Maŋgalili clan’s ‘Outside Story’, which goes as follows: It was in the ancestral times when the Guwak men, Munuminya and Yikawaŋa, sitting under the shade of the sacred Marawili tree, instructed the ancestral koel cuckoo Guwak to lead the Maŋgalili people to a new place ... continue reading BANDARR WIRRPANDA MUŊURRU, 2021 29.5 x 21 cmm inked and etched aluminium road sign $1,200 .... The night bird Guwak became lonely so he set out to find his friend Marrŋu, the possum, to talk to. During the day he found him in several places but Marrŋu would not talk to him because it was daylight.... BANDARR WIRRPANDA MUŊURRU - MAŊGALILI STORY, 2021 29.5 x 21 cm inked and etched aluminium road sign $1,200

This series of works from Waringarri Aboriginal Arts/Kira Kiro Artists is part of the current group exhibition 'Game, Set, Match', consisting of seven individual series of artworks by various artists - on view now at our Redfern gallery. "In the dream time our ancestors didn't believe in God. One day a big storm came across our land. Our ancestors went to the cave to get away from the rain and the flood, they all settled in their new home in the cave they looked out and saw a figure in the clouds they thought is was a ghost, but it was Wandjina emerging from behind the biggest storm that was building up, the water rose, but our people, our ancestors were all safe from the rain and the flood. Today we still have the monsoon rain and the flood still comes up, but we will never get flooded out, because it is believe he is still watching over us in case we get flooded out." - Angelina Guluwulla Karadada Boona ANGELINA GULUWULLA KARDADA BOONA WANDJINA EMERGING, 2022 80 x 60 cm Natural Earth Pigments on Canvas "My mum used to paint on bark, bush baskets and Numarrga (bush cradle). I learnt two languages from my parents, plus other languages in my life." - Angelina Guluwulla Karadada Boona ANGELINA GULUWULLA KARDADA BOONA WANDJINA EMERGING, 2022 80 x 60 cm Natural Earth Pigments on Canvas Angelina was born in Kalumburu and has lived in Kalumburu all her life. Her mum is famous artist Lily Karadada and her father is Jack Karadada, who was a medicine man and would make artefacts like didgeridoo and spears for hunting. ANGELINA GULUWULLA KARDADA BOONA WANDJINA EMERGING, 2022 80 x 60 cm Natural Earth Pigments on Canvas VIEW GAME, SET, MATCH EXHIBITION 17 Thurlow Street, Redfern, NSW, 2016 27 January - 24 February 2024

This set of three works from Mangkaja Arts is part of the current group exhibition Game, Set, Match, consisting of seven individual series of artworks by various artists - on view now at our Redfern galleries. “The works on Perspex came about by chance, when in 2016 some Perspex sheets were left in the Mangkaja studio at Fitzroy Crossing in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. The sheets had been used to protect a wall mural from the elements. When artist Sonia Kurarra discovered them, she decided to paint a large work on one of the sheets and so it began.” - excerpt of Bold Thinking that Breaks the Mould, published in the AFR Online, Feb 29, 2020 TOMMY MAY NGARRALJA KURTAL, 2018 60 x 60 cm acrylic on perspex$4,500 Tommy May is a Wangkajunga and Walmajarri man who was born at Yarrnkurnja on the Canning Stock Route in the Great Sandy Desert. He dances and sings Kurtal, a ceremony relating to the main jila [permanent waterhole] in his country. According to the artist, ‘This is a story about Dreamtime people before Canning. Before whitefella come with a camel, Dreamtime people were there. These two blokes, Kurtal and Kaningarra, they been looking after the two waterholes, cleaning all the time.’ The works are of ancient and important stories of Country that challenge the perceptions of what Aboriginal art "should" look like. LISA UHL KURRKAPI, 2018 60 x 60 cm acrylic on perspex $2,900 As a young woman, Lisa Uhl did not have the authority to paint major Dreaming stories. Instead, she restricted herself to the secular subject matter of trees. in particular, the turtutjarti (walnut trees) and kurrkapi (desert oaks) of Wangkajungka country on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert. The Desert Oak provides shade in the desert and the nectar of the flowers is sweet and edible. Every piece is made by layering acrylic colours on to the Perspex with the bold mark-making for which Mangkaja artists are renowned. NOLA ROGERS GOGO STATION, 2021 60 x 60 cm acrylic on perspex$1,500 This is about Gogo station on the old road. When I was young we were living there. We used to collect the coloured rocks from the hills, all different colours. Our mothers too and parents collected stones. We would gift it to our teachers and people as a gift from our country.

JOANNE CURRIE NALINGU It Flows 14 December 2023 - 13 January 2024 17 Thurlow Street, Redfern, NSW, 2016 JOANNE CURRIE NALINGU RIVER SAND LINES, 2023 100 x 150 cm Synthetic Polymer Paint on Canvas AU$11,000 The importance of the river as a metaphor for life and change is constant in the artist's paintings. Water, is also a place of reflection. The river takes Joanne back to the hardships of her early life living on the banks of the Maranoa River in Mitchell, through her journey to the present with her family based in Caloundra. Her paintings speak of the river as a living entity, the rippling lines of the surface mimic the flow of water, or eddies of air and light. As subtle reflections of different events in her own life, these lines merge to provide a place of contemplation for the viewer on our own course of life. ABOUT JOANNE Born: 1964 Mitchell QLD Language: Gungurri Country: Maranoa River Region: Mitchell QLD "I grew up on the ‘Yumba’, out west by the banks of the Maranoa River in the 1960s. Now I live closer to Brisbane where we raised our kids and now our grandkids. I’ve always painted about the Maranoa area, the traditional designs found on shields and artefacts, the lines and colours of the river…I try to keep it simple…clean and sharp!" In 2008, she won The Wynne Prize at AGNSW and has been a finalist numerous times in the Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Award. Joanne’s work is held in numerous private and public collections including Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art and the Museum of Brisbane. JOSHUA BONSON Ancestor's Footsteps 14 December 2023 - 13 January 2024 17 Thurlow Street, Redfern, NSW, 2016 JOSHUA BONSON SKIN: SHIFTING TIDES, 2023 126 x 96 cm Synthetic Polymer Paint on Canvas AU$5,500 Movement, colour and texture play an important role in this work. Ultramarine blue, Prussian blue and Titanium white portray the maze of reefs and islands, strong tidal currents with narrow channels between Islands and reefs of the Torres Strait. Luminous colours that change and shift with the tide. Movement and colour under the water. Unexpected patterns and shapes as the sea moves with the currents and tide. I am a man of the Saltwater; a Crocodile; Proud of my Heritage. Joshua Bonson ABOUT JOSHUA Born: 1988 Country: Jawoyn & Kala Lagaw Ya Region: Torres Strait Islands & Far North Queensland "The minute I was flying over the ocean heading to the islands I could feel my ancestors with me. We were all filled with excitement and joy." Joshua Bonson is a three-time finalist in the Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (2007, 2008, 2013). He won the Top End NAIDOC Artist of the Year in 2013, and followed it up by winning the Young Achievers Award NT main prize, as well as Artist of the year in 2014. His work is held in National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, the Kerry Stokes Collection, Perth, and the TOGA Contemporary Art Collection in Australian and Berlin, to name a few. Standing in my Ancestor’s Footsteps is his third Solo Exhibition with Cooee Art Leven

Exhibitions Opening Thursday 14th December 6 - 8pm Joanne Currie Nalingu - It Flows & Joshua Bonson - Ancestor’s Footsteps While opening simultaneously, simultaneously, each Exhibition is its own body of work, created entirely independent of one another. Still, the parallels are striking. At surface level, both artists depict bodies of water, each of them deeply significant to their respective history and connection to Country. The artists’ respective subjects - the Maranoa River for Currie Nalingua and the Arafura Sea for Bonson - act as containers of memory, personal and ancestral. For Joanne Currie, the river links back to childhood, “growing up living on the banks of the Maranoa river at the ‘Yumba’ (East Mitchell Aboriginal Settlement)”*. For Bonson, the Arafura sea connects his home in Darwin to his ancestral Country in the Torres Strait. In both cases, the subject offers a fleeting self portrait in the water’s reflection, like an ever-moving and refracting mirror, containing within itself a history that reaches back generations. As the viewer, we are invited to participate: Bonson leads us charging over the tumultuous Arafura sea on the back of his totem, the saltwater crocodile. Joanne Currie invites us to the bank of the Maranoa, where we may kneel and lean out over the water, as far as we can before tipping over; briefly we glimpse a reflection in the rippling surface.