These Indigenous prints provide a dazzling and enriching experience

Indigenous prints made and editioned by non-Indigenous master printers have always been considered as contested ground in the Australian art market.

They should not be. Pablo Picasso and David Hockney in Europe, and Brett Whiteley and Lloyd Rees in Australia are well known for their etchings, lithographs, woodcuts and screenprints. However, they all employed the services of master printers to bring their prints to fruition.

Basil Hall has worked with Indigenous artists over several decades, frequently taking the matrices into remote communities where the artists, mainly painters and carvers, work on the plates, blocks of wood and other surfaces to weave their magic and create their designs.

These matrices are printed by Hall and his master printers in numbered limited editions in his studios in Canberra and Braidwood and subsequently signed and approved by the artists. Hall is one of the most ethical master printers working in Australia today and the works on display are unique original prints produced in limited editions of between 10 and 40 prints. Obviously, each print in an edition is printed directly from the matrix, and in some ways is unique.

In contrast, reproductions mechanically reproduce something that exists in a different medium, for example, as a painting or drawing, and have little intrinsic value as there is always the possibility that, as reproduction techniques improve, further and better copies will be produced. The original print is a unique creation and once the edition is printed, the matrix is cancelled and no further prints can be made. As democratic multiples, prints are generally more affordable than paintings or drawings, although some prints by Picasso and Warhol attract a price tag of millions of dollars, while in Australia, a print by Margaret Preston may set you back over $50,000.

The prints in this exhibition are made by artists from six remote art centres, including Bula’bula Arts at Ramingining, Djilpin Arts at Beswick, Iwantja Arts at Indulkana, Jilamara Arts and Craft Association on Melville Island, Ninuku Arts at Kalka and the Warmun Art Centre. The somewhat cryptic title of the exhibition decodes as Timothy Cook (Tim), Balang T.E. Lewis (Tom E.), Harry Tjutjuna (Harry), Rusty Peters (Rusty), Tiger Yaltangki (Tiger) and Phillip Gudthaykudthay (Pussycat). Personally, I am not a great fan of such nicknames, even though I appreciate this practice in Indigenous communities.

The prints are a riot of colour with a great diversity of pictorial languages in the almost 50 images on display. It is always gratifying to see an exhibition from a single workshop, which does not appear as a reflection of a house style and in which the different artistic personalities are allowed to shine through. One of my favourites in this show is the Kaluma screenprint by the famous Melville Island artist, Timothy Cook. Although the composition is similar to that found in his paintings, in the print, the lightness of touch with floating rings and dots creates a pulsating and dynamic design.

Shirley Banalanydju, a young artist from Bula’bula Arts at Ramingining, in her screenprint Gumang (magpie Geese) shows the geese sacred to the Ganalbingu people at a freshwater billabong that had been made by the Goose spirit and that echoes the shape of the goose nest. The birds are in their nest guarding their sacred eggs. While reminiscent of a bark painting, the screenprint affords a looser and more schematic treatment of the surface.

A gem in the exhibition is the vibrant and energetic etching, Dance, 2016. It is a clever and hypnotically intense image.

Most of the prints on display were made for the respective art communities and sadly many of them rarely see the light of day. Now gathered together in this exhibition, they provide a dazzling and enriching experience.