Here’s an artist whose work I love – Billy Benn Perrurle Artetyerre. The Aboriginal collection at the AGNSW is currently closed for renovations so, not being able to see his energetic works there, I’ll post some here.
Billy Benn Perrurle Artetyerre
Bindi, Acrylic on board, 10 x 16 cm
Billy Benn Perrurle Artetyerre
Acrylic on linen
Billy Benn Perrurle Artetyerre
Harts Range, pre 1997, Utopia, acrylic on fibreboard panel
(Collection of the National Gallery of Australia)
It can be hard to track down information about Aboriginal artists, but this Indigenart exhibition page has some interesting background on the man. I like this quotation from Catherine Peattie, Arts Co-odinator at Mwerre Anthurre Artists:
Residing in Alice Springs the Mwerre Anthurre Artists only occasionally get to visit their country. As a result, they paint their county from memory. Remembering and painting country becomes a bittersweet experience. It is a celebration of connection to place with each new painting reinvigorating their culture, contrasted against a sadness at their separation from such a significant space. Carrying the country within, Billy Benn says when he sees that country in his mind’s eye his spirit is there, and his spirit lifts. The paintings are imbued with such a sense of place that laws of time and space become circular as we the viewer are transported to this country.
These are works that connect with my own interest in remembered landscapes, that inevitably become, in part at least, landscapes of the imagination. Such landscapes can also be strong reminders from what is behind landscape, behind our own psychic landscapes – that other landscape of the noumenal, our essence, which I continue to write about and attempt to articulate in my own art making.
