An old friend from Gunbalanya

We had the pleasure of attending the opening at Tuggeranong Arts the other night of the Bill and Bev Wood collection. Bill was a member of parliament in Queensland and then the ACT and was a great ACT Minister for the Arts back in the 80s and 90s. During that time, apart from championing numerous causes, he and Bev collected widely from established and emerging artists from the region and during their travels. One trip took them to the Northern Territory, where their daughter, Wendy, was working (with me in the School of Art) at the Northern Territory University at the time. One of my favourite projects during my time managing Northern Editions was one I did in collaboration with Wendy, my printers and the artists from Injalak Arts, Gunbalanya. I had the idea that it might be fun to produce some rock art that could actually be purchased (very capitalist idea, granted) and approached Wendy, as a ceramicist, and Lofty Bardayal Nadjamerrek, the last of the old rock artists in Western Arnhem Land, with the proposal that Lofty paint images on a number of ceramic boxes, to be constructed by Wendy. A number of trips and a baby (Wendy’s) later, we had 10 exquisite boxes with painted lids and I ran a workshop on Injalak Hill with the younger artists from the art centre. Here, they were able to look at the rock art by their ancestors and respond directly to the paintings onto zinc plate. Printmakers, Gary Shinfield and Andrew Sinclair assisted me in etching and processing the plates on the site and, later, the BHE printers Tash Rowell, Monique Auricchio, Simon White, Jo Diggens and I printed up editions for the boxed sets and individual sale.