< Back Greenie Purvis ​ Greenie Purvis ​ ​ ARTIST PROFILE ARTIST CV MARKET ANALYSIS READ FULL ARTIST PROFILE top Anchor 1 PROFILE Greenie Purvis ​ ARTIST CV Market Analysis MARKET ANALYSIS Disclaimer: At Cooee Art Leven, we strive to maintain accurate and respectful artist profiles. Despite our efforts, there may be occasional inaccuracies. We welcome any corrections or suggested amendments. Please contact us with your feedback .

< Back Henoch Raberaba ​ Henoch Raberaba ​ ​ ARTIST PROFILE ARTIST CV MARKET ANALYSIS READ FULL ARTIST PROFILE top Anchor 1 PROFILE Henoch Raberaba ​ ARTIST CV Market Analysis MARKET ANALYSIS Disclaimer: At Cooee Art Leven, we strive to maintain accurate and respectful artist profiles. Despite our efforts, there may be occasional inaccuracies. We welcome any corrections or suggested amendments. Please contact us with your feedback .

< Back Rammey Ramsey ​ Rammey Ramsey 1935 ​ ARTIST PROFILE ARTIST CV MARKET ANALYSIS READ FULL ARTIST PROFILE top Anchor 1 PROFILE Rammey Ramsey 1935 Though the trailblazers of the modern Aboriginal art movement have often been senior in years, their early life steeped in tradition, this has never hampered their capacity for innovation. The divergent approaches to art in the Kimberley area stems from the complex network of Dreamtime narratives that thread through its vast tracts of once shared land. The ceremonial exchanges that occurred seasonally, between specific tribal and language groups, fostered culturally commensurate perspectives rather than exclusivity and conflict. To this day, a malleable framework of cultural affiliations and historical readings means that new interpretations are always possible. This has played out creatively in the career of Rammey Ramsey. Rammey Ramsey started painting for Jirrawun Arts in the central Kimberley in 2000. He was in his mid sixties by then but his involvement in traditional ceremony had already made art-making a central part of his life. He is a senior Gija man, of Jungurra skin and his country is Warwaloon, west of Bedford Downs. This country provides the subject matter of most of his works. Like many of his people, he began working on pastoral stations during his youth. These stations were adjacent to ancestral lands where traditional ceremonial activities could still be maintained. When equal pay legislation prompted pastoralists to send Aboriginal people off the land, they settled in small communities throughout the Kimberley and slowly the art movement began to take shape. Art became an essential way to stay connected with their ancient cultural heritage. Almost immediately after he began painting, Ramsey’s work was being shown alongside his renowned fellow artists at Jirrawun Paddy Bedford, Freddie Timms and Hector Jandalay, at the William Mora Galleries in Melbourne. This exhibition was called Gaagembi, meaning 'poor things' - a term of sympathy, sorrow and endearment. It refers to the feeling of the Gija people for their country and the traditional way of life now lost to them. Alongside ancestral topographies, historical themes and events are often touched upon in Ramsey’s work. The Gija people suffered cruelly at the hands of the early white settlers. Enslavement and massacre were part of that sorry tale. Ramsey trained young dancers, created body painting and dance poles and danced himself for the Joonba performances that commemorate these events Jirrawun Arts was a model art centre, owned and run by the artists under the guidance of Tony Oliver. Oliver’s large collection of modern art books exposed Ramsey to influences such as Paul Klee and Sonia Delaunay. The group also regularly discussed their own work, exchanging ideas and memories and techniques. Ramsey was influenced by Rover Thomas’s majestic ochres in his early work but went on to explore a more gestural style, inspired in part by his close friend Paddy Bedford. Building a wet on wet field of colour gradations, Ramsey embeds simple jewel-like shapes of vivid gouache colour. These are the distilled features of his country such as hills, meeting places, water holes, or may refer to an event, plant or animal home. Sharp contrasting or dotted lines often weave around and between, representing rivers, roads or other connecting landmarks. This is Warwaloon, an area that makes up part of Gija country and the place where Ramsey was born. It is also his traditional name. The artists of Jirrawun would visit the city in distinctive looking suits and dark glasses. They were photographed with politicians and dignitaries as they gained the art world’s approval and financial independence. A new purpose-built art centre was built at Wyndham, near the coast. Over time however, as the older artists died, Jirrawun Arts folded, and in 2010, Ramsey moved to the Warmun Art Centre. Besides being a painter, he is a loving husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather, with many other community members who also appreciate his unassuming humanity that has seen both the best and worst of life. Above all he seeks to convey knowledge and compassion in his work. Recently he has explored printmaking at the Charles Darwin University Studio. His work is held in major collections throughout Australia including Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and the Ian Potter Gallery, Melbourne. Profile author: Sophie Pierce ARTIST CV Market Analysis MARKET ANALYSIS Rammey Ramsey's paintings first appeared at public auction in 2007. By then his work had been included in six group exhbitions and 3 solo exhibitions. Given he only began painting at 65 years of age in 2000 this was quite an achievement. It was not until 2011 that more than 20 works had been offered for sale and at that time his success rate was poor with only 50% of works finding new homes. His record price however stood at $19,200, a record set in 2009 by a work entitled Doowoon Country - Tranie Gorge, 2004 at Deutscher & Hackett, and equalled by another work at the same auction house in 2010. Thougn many arguably finer works have been offered for sale since that time, these two records still stand today as they highest prices ever paid for a work by Ramsay. Two other works hold his 3rd highest price of $18,600. Warlawoon Country 2008 sold at Deutscher & Hackett's sale of the Laverty Collection in 2015 and this equalled the price acheived at Bonham's two eyars earlier for a work of the same name created in 2007. Shortly after the begining of 2016, the number of works by this artist that had been offered for sale on the secondary market had risen to 51 of which 61 percent have sold. it has been enough to see Ramsay finally break into the top 100 artists of the movement in 96th position. Rammey Ramsey is an artist who typifies the move in appreciation of Aboriginal art from those with an interest in its origins and culture, to those looking for works that resonate with contemporary abstraction. It is hard to look at his work and not compare it with that of designers under the influence of Sonia Delaunay. They are, regardless of that fact, highly accpomplished and attractive paintings. Ramsay was not a particularly productive artist and as a result his ouvre is relatively small. The best of his paintings will without doubt continue to find willing buyers whenever they appear at auction. Disclaimer: At Cooee Art Leven, we strive to maintain accurate and respectful artist profiles. Despite our efforts, there may be occasional inaccuracies. We welcome any corrections or suggested amendments. Please contact us with your feedback .

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.