Lorraine Connelly-Northey (born 1962 in Swan Hill, Victoria) is an Australian Aboriginal artist, a descendant of the Waradgerie (Wiradjuri) people. [1] She also has Irish, English and Scottish heritage. [2]
Lorraine Connelly-Northey's artistic practice is influenced by both her western and Indigenous heritage. She is known for her over-sized woven installations that take the shape of traditional Aboriginal everyday life objects, such as koolimans (bowls) and narbongs (dilly bags). [3] For creating her pieces she uses found natural and industrial materials, such as feathers, shells, corrugated iron, and wire.
Connelly-Northey has exhibited in the 2nd International Indigenous Triennial (2013), [4] the 7th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (2013), and in the 18th Biennale of Sydney (2010). [5]
Her work is held by important collections, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; [6] Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney; [7] National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; [8] Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, [9] among others.
In 2023, to commemorate 100 years of legacy, the Australian War Memorial acquired a sculpture by Connelly-Northey, which consists of 100 steel-made coolamons. [10]
Janet Laurence is an Australian artist, based in Sydney, who works in photography, sculpture, video and installation art. Her work is an expression of her concern about environment and ethics, her "ecological quest" as she produces art that allows the viewer to immerse themselves to strive for a deeper connection with the natural world. Her work has been included in major survey exhibitions, nationally and internationally and is regularly exhibited in Australia, Japan, Germany, Hong Kong and the UK. She has exhibited in galleries and outside in site-specific projects, often involving collaborations with architects, landscape architects and environmental scientists. Her work is held in all major Australian galleries as well as private collections in Australia and overseas.
Ellen José (1951 – 2 June 2017) was an Australian Indigenous artist, photographer and anarchist. She was a Torres Strait Islander descendant from Murray, Darnley and Horn Islands who lived in Melbourne with husband and fellow anarchist Joseph Toscano.
Bob Jenyns is a prolific Australian artist whose practice, spanning over four decades, has produced countless sculptures, prints, drawings, and paintings. He has participated in many of Australia's most significant art exhibitions including the first Biennale of Sydney (1973), the 1973, 1975 and 1978 Mildura Sculpture Triennials, the 1981 Australian Perspecta, the 2nd Australian Sculpture Biennale, and the 1990 Sculpture Triennial. Jenyns was a finalist in the 2006 Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award, and in 2007 won the award with his work Pont de l'archeveche. He is represented in many of the country's largest collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Queensland Art Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Brisbane, and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. Jenyns has also received multiple grants from the Australia Council's Visual Arts Board, has curated exhibitions and has taught at the Tasmanian School of Art as head of the sculpture department (1982–2005).
Danie Mellor is an Australian artist who was the winner of 2009 National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award. Born in Mackay, Queensland, Mellor grew up in Scotland, Australia, and South Africa before undertaking tertiary studies at North Adelaide School of Art, the Australian National University (ANU) and Birmingham Institute of Art and Design. He then took up a post lecturing at Sydney College of the Arts. He works in different media including printmaking, drawing, painting, and sculpture. Considered a key figure in contemporary Indigenous Australian art, the dominant theme in Mellor's art is the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian cultures.
Doreen Reid Nakamarra was an Australian Aboriginal artist and painter. Reid was considered an important artist within the Western Desert cultural bloc. She was a leading painter at the Papunya Tula artist cooperative in Central Australia.
Contemporary Indigenous Australian art is the modern art work produced by Indigenous Australians, that is, Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander people. It is generally regarded as beginning in 1971 with a painting movement that started at Papunya, northwest of Alice Springs, Northern Territory, involving Aboriginal artists such as Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri and Kaapa Tjampitjinpa, and facilitated by white Australian teacher and art worker Geoffrey Bardon. The movement spawned widespread interest across rural and remote Aboriginal Australia in creating art, while contemporary Indigenous art of a different nature also emerged in urban centres; together they have become central to Australian art. Indigenous art centres have fostered the emergence of the contemporary art movement, and as of 2010 were estimated to represent over 5000 artists, mostly in Australia's north and west.
The Aboriginal Memorial is a work of contemporary Indigenous Australian art from the late 1980s, and comprises 200 decorated hollow log coffins. It was conceived by Djon (John) Mundine in 1987–88 and realised by 43 artists from Ramingining and neighbouring communities of Central Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory. Artists who participated in its creation included David Malangi and George Milpurrurru.
Hetti Kemerre Perkins is an Aboriginal Australian art curator and writer. She is known for her work at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where she was the senior curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art at the gallery from around 1998 until 2011, and for many significant exhibitions and projects.
Yininmadyemi - Thou didst let fall is a sculptural artwork by Indigenous Australian artist Tony Albert located in Hyde Park, Sydney. Unveiled on 31 March 2015, the artwork acknowledges the service of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women in the Australian Defence Force.
Maringka Baker is an Aboriginal artist from central Australia. She lives in the Pitjantjatjara community of Kaṉpi, South Australia, and paints for Tjungu Palya, based in nearby Nyapaṟi.Maringka is known for her paintings. Maringka paints sacred stories from her family's Dreaming (spirituality). As well as the important cultural meanings they carry, her paintings are known for being rich in colour and contrast. She often paints the desert landscape in bright green colours, and contrasts it against reds and ochres to depict landforms. She also uses layers of contrasting colours to show the detail of the desert in full bloom.
Judy Watson is an Australian Waanyi multi-media artist who works in print-making, painting, video and installation. Her work often examines Indigenous Australian histories, and she has received a number of high-profile commissions for public spaces.
Julie Gough is an artist, writer and curator based in Tasmania, Australia.
Brenda L. Croft is an Aboriginal Australian artist, curator, writer, and educator working across contemporary Indigenous and mainstream arts and cultural sectors. Croft was a founding member of the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative in 1987.
Esme Russell was an Australian Bidjigal artist and shellworker. Timbery's shellwork had contemporary elements blended with the traditional medium. Her work is in the collections of several art museums throughout Australia.
Nici Cumpston, is an Australian photographer, painter, curator, writer, and educator.
Nyapanyapa Yunupingu was an Australian Yolngu painter and printmaker who lived and worked in the community at Yirrkala, Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory. Yunupingu created works of art that drastically diverge from the customs of the Yolngu people and made waves within the art world as a result. Due to this departure from tradition within her oeuvre, Yunupingu's work had varying receptions from within her community and the broader art world.
Nonggirrnga Marawili was an Australian Yolngu painter and printmaker. She was the daughter of the acclaimed artist and pre-contact warrior Mundukul. Marawili was born on the beach at Darrpirra, near Djarrakpi, as a member of the Madarrpa clan of the Yirritja moiety. She grew up in both Yilpara and Yirrkala in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, but lived wakir', meaning her family would move frequently, camping at Madarrpa clan-related sites between Blue Mud Bay and Groote Eylandt. Marawili died at Yirrkala in October 2023.
Owen Yalandja is Aboriginal Australian carver, painter and singer of the Kuninjku people from western Arnhem Land, Australia. A senior member of the Dangkorlo clan, who are the Indigenous custodians of an important site related to female water spirits known as yawkyawk, Yalandja has become internationally renowned for his painted carvings of these spirits, as well as his paintings on eucalyptus bark.
Regina Pilawuk Wilson is an Australian Aboriginal artist known for her paintings, printmaking and woven fiber-artworks. She paints syaws, warrgarri, and message sticks. Her work has been shown in many Australian and international museums, collections and galleries. She has won the General Painting category of the Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards in 2003 for a syaw painting. Wilson has been a finalist for the Kate Challis RAKA Award, the Togart Award, and the Wynne Prize.
The Yarrenyty Arltere Artists are a collective of Indigenous artists from Yarrenyty Arltere Town Camp in Mparntwe in the Northern Territory of Australia, best known for its soft sculptural work.