Private Eye & Kudditji Kngwarreye

Two very special and very different Exhibitions will open at Japingka Gallery on Friday, 18th July. The Exhibition in Gallery 1 entitled "Private Eye" features some of the recognised Greats of the Indigenous Fine Art Movement and provides a snapshot of the movement from the 1990s. The Exhibition in Gallery 2 titled: "Kudditji Kngwarreye" features brand new, stunning and evocative works by this acclaimed senior Utopia Artist.

The exhibition entitled Private Eye will include works from famous Australian Aboriginal artists including Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Naata Nungurrayi, Jackie Giles, Johnny Warangkula, Elizabeth Nyumi, Lucy Yukenbarri, Mitjili Gibson, Maxie Tjampitjinpa and Jimmy Pike.

The decision by a private West Australian collector to put this art collection up for sale offers art buyers and students of Aboriginal art a unique opportunity to survey a significant period in Aboriginal art through the eyes of one collector. The exhibition brings to the market works not seen publicly since their purchase in the 1990s.

Many of these paintings are from artists who have passed away and whose work is rarely on view in public galleries. Works of this quality by this select group of seminal, famous ?Greats? of the Indigenous Fine Art Movement are even more rarely available for purchase.

Kudditji Kngwarreye has a deep knowledge of the spiritual significance of Alhalkere, his ancestral homelands at Utopia, 270 kms north-east from Alice Springs. An old man in his eighties, Kudditji is the senior custodian of Ankerre, the spiritual sites across his country that are integral to the Emu Dreaming story. Kudditji counts off the other senior men, custodians of the surrounding Dreamings, who have now passed on.

At the centre of the structure of the paintings is the rectangle that represents the ceremonial grounds, the heart of the Emu Dreaming site. The sites are sacred for Men’s Ceremonies and initiation rites. The role of the male emu in nature is to protect the nest and hatch the eggs. Therefore the totemic connection between the Emu sites and the Men’s Law draws deeply on the function of nurturing, both for the Country and for the traditional custodians of the land.

His own paintings of Country and the Dreamings that give life to that region are abstract impressions of landscape in all its moods, changed by the seasons, the time of day, the clouds, rain and heat - all emotive expressions of the many facets of the Country. The ancient Ankerre Dreaming cycle inspires both the paintings of Kudditji Kngwarreye and the life of this senior Anmatyerre lawman. Kudditji Kngwarreye carries on the male Law tradition as had his famous Emily Kngwarreye (c1910-1996) carried the Women's Law and painting tradition.