Pedro Wonaeamirri (born 1974) is a contemporary Aboriginal Australian painter, carver, printmaker, singer, dancer, and performer. [1] As a member of the Tiwi people, Wonaeamirri regards his art as both a continuation of Tiwi culture as well as an open-ended exploration of style and technique. [2]
Wonaeamirri was born in 1974 at Pirlangimpi, Melville Island. [3] Raised by his grandmother, Jacinta Wonaeamirri, Pedro Wonaeamirri was taught the Tiwi cultural customs and artforms by both the members of his kin and of his community. [4] Wonaeamirri learned how to carve under the guidance of his uncle, Romuald Puruntatameri, and learned how to paint by watching elder artists at Jilamara Arts and Crafts, such as Kitty Kantilla and Paddy Freddy Puruntatameri. [3] Wonaeamirri is also an experienced singer and dancer, both of which form an important part of Tiwi culture. [4]
Wonaeamirri began his career at Jilamara Arts and Crafts in 1991, for which he has since served as an artist, Vice President, and President of the center. [4] Wonaeamirri has exhibited widely in both solo and group exhibitions (see Significant Exhibitions), and has also been recognized or considered for numerous awards (see Recognitions). [3]
Wonaeamirri uses traditional natural pigments and materials collected from his country, including ochre, feathers, beeswax, and wood. [4] In his paintings Wonaeamirri utilizes kayimwagakimi, the traditional Tiwi wood comb, to create dotted infill, which is overlain upon fields of red, yellow, white, and black. [4] Wonaeamirri depicts pwoja (body painting designs) in a style that is both distinctly Tiwi and unique to himself, by experimenting with designs and patterns while alluding to an illustrious cultural history. [3] [5]
Richard Bell is an Aboriginal Australian artist and political activist. He is one of the founders of proppaNOW, a Brisbane-based Aboriginal art collective.
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.
Bronwyn Bancroft is an Aboriginal Australian artist, administrator, book illustrator, and among the first three Australian fashion designers to show their work in Paris. She was born in Tenterfield, New South Wales, and trained in Canberra and Sydney.
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.
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.
Bindi Cole Chocka is an Australian contemporary new media artist, photographer, writer and curator of Wadawurrung heritage.
Tiwi Designs is an Aboriginal art centre located in Wurrumiyanga on Bathurst Island, north of Darwin, Australia. It holds a notable place in the history of the contemporary Aboriginal art movement as one of the longest running Aboriginal art centres, having started as a small screen-printing group in 1968-69. Only Ernabella Arts (1948) can establish a longer history.
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.
Kitty Kantilla also known as Kutuwalumi Purawarrumpatu was a renowned aboriginal artist from the Tiwi Islands of the Northern Territory of Australia. She worked in a variety of media, including carved ironwood sculptures, tunga, painting on paper, canvas and prints. Her work is held in collections around 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.
Jean Baptiste Apuatimi (1940–2013) was a significant Tiwi Island artist whose work is held at most major and several minor Australian galleries and the British Museum. Her works were first exhibited in 1991 in group shows. From 1997 until her death, Apuatimi worked full-time with the Tiwi Design Aboriginal Cooperative.
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. 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.
Marie Elizabeth Rita McMahon is an Australian artist, known for her paintings, prints, posters, drawings, and design work. Born in Melbourne, she has worked in various communities of Australian Aboriginal people and as of 2020 works in Sydney. Her work has focused on social, political, and environmental issues. Her posters about Aboriginal rights and Aboriginal life appear in major gallery collections in Australia.
Maria Josette Orsto was an aboriginal artist born at Pirlangimpi, on Melville Island. Her father, Declan Apuatimi, and her mother, Jean Baptiste Apuatimi, were also noted aboriginal artists from the Tiwi Islands. Orsto was one of the first female members of Tiwi Designs. Prior to her death she worked and lived at Wurrumiyanga on Bathurst Island.
Djon Mundine is an Aboriginal Australian artist, curator, activist and writer. He is a member of the Bundjalung people of northern New South Wales. He is known for having conceived the 1988 work Aboriginal Memorial, on display at the National Gallery of Art in Canberra.
Alick Tipoti, whose traditional name is Zugub, is a Torres Strait Islander artist, linguist, and activist of the Kala Lagaw Ya people, from Badu Island, in the Zenadh Kes. His work includes painting, installations, printmaking, sculpture and mask-making, and is focused on preserving the culture and languages of his people.
Robert Fielding is an Australian artist based in Mimili, South Australia. He is known for his recent series of photographs of wrecked cars and other discarded objects on which he has painted colourful designs.
Mary Dhapalany, skin name Bilinydjan, also known as Mary Dhapalany Mangul, is an Indigenous Australian contemporary artist based in Ramingining, Australia in Arnhem Land. She is of the Yolŋu people from the Mandhalpuy clan, of the Dhuwa moiety. She is a renowned Aboriginal Australian fibre-artist.
