Nomad Art Productions

Posted: 13 Jan 2012  |  By: Trent Walter

Djalkiri: We are standing on their names is a touring group exhibition organised by Nomad Art Productions, based in Darwin and Canberra. Originating as a cross-cultural printmaking project undertaken in 2009, and coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species, it includes works by Djambawa Marawili, Marrirra Marawili, Marrnyula Mununggurr, Mulkun Wirrpanda, Fiona Hall, John Wolseley, Jörg Schmeisser and Judy Watson.

There are many things to like about the Djalkiri project. First is Nomad’s approach to cross–cultural and collaborative projects. Since their foundation in 2005, Nomad has embarked on various excursions in the print medium in collaboration with Basil Hall Editions including Replant: a new generation of botanical art (2006) and Custodians: Country and Culture (2008). The trip to Yilpara, Blue Mud Bay in north–east Arnhem Land, where much of the work was made, included not only the artists, but facilitators including the printmaker Basil Hall, ethno–biologist Glenn Wightman, anthropologist Professor Howard Morphy and photographer Peter Eve.

And then there are the works on display. Their gap in stylistic approach is bridged by the print medium employed by the artists. Jörg Schmeisser, one of Australia’s pre-eminent printmakers, combines etched lines with delicate tonal shading in his multiplate Mangroves and Notes (2010). John Wolseley’s Sea wrack: Tide after Tide – Baniyala (2010), which shares a similar palette to Schmeisser’s Mangroves, brings together objects from the sea deposited by the tide at the artist’s feet. Arranged in the drawing as they appeared on the sand, the objects present an interesting mediation of landscape at Yilpara that is neither didactic nor staid.

Mulkun Wirrpanda’s Yalata (2010) combines etching and screenprint techniques to portray miny’tji, or sacred designs, of ancestral times in Yolgnu culture. Its vibrant rarrk [cross hatching] patterns shimmer across the picture surface, while the bird-like tracks appear to move away from and towards the well-like motif at the picture’s centre. Fiona Hall’s Pandanus – Gungu (2010), with its explosion of pandanus leaves across the picture plane, is similarly teeming with life, while Marrnyula Mununggurr’s Bawu (2010) references the flags of Macassan ships, as well as the ocean, sky and sea rights ceremony.

In their examination of the Yilpara landscape, these works fulfil the publisher’s aim for the project, namely to “share knowledge and observations of the natural environment from a range of cultural viewpoints”. With print publishing such a rare activity in Australia, it is incredible to see such a unique project intrinsically linked with its site. As well as the multifarious responses to it from artists of diverse cultural background and experience. Djalkiri: We are standing on their names sets another benchmark for Nomad Art Productions and serves to highlight the possibility and importance of cross-cultural collaboration.

Click to view image/s from this exhibition: