Uneven Gija exhibition has several outstanding pieces

The Warmun Art Centre was established in 1998 by some of the great artists of the region, including Rover Thomas, Queenie McKenzie, Madigan Thomas and Hector Jandany. These artists saw the need for a community-owned and controlled centre through which to promote Gija art, culture and language.

The work of these artists has entered the history of art and is now held in major public art collections including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris.

Gritty ochres, deep blacks and white dots became the hallmark style of the region and has been passed on to subsequent generations of Gija artists, including Patrick Mung Mung, Mabel Juli, Rusty Peters, Shirley Purdie, Gordon Barney, Betty Carrington and Phyllis Thomas.

While still recovering from the devastating flood of 2011, the Warmun Arts Centre is now celebrating its 21st anniversary and the Nancy Sever Gallery, which has been exhibiting art from Warmun since 2015, is holding a commemorative exhibition.

Although there is a strong continuity of tradition amongst the contemporary Gija artists, both stylistically and in technique, as well as through the country that they paint, few reach the profundity of the work of the earlier artists. In this exhibition there are several outstanding pieces, but others could be best passed over in silence.

Rusty Peters is a senior Gija man of Joowoorroo skin, who grew up on Springvale Station south west of Warmun, and is a senior lawman. In the 1980s, he turned to art with Waringarri Arts and in 1997 moved to Crocodile Hole where he started to paint on canvas with Freddie Timms’s Jirrawun Aboriginal Arts Group. After the closure of Jirrawun Arts in 2010, Rusty Peters returned to paint with Warmun Art Centre.

Rusty Peters’ Languages coming together (2011) is the highlight of this exhibition. It is almost like the unscrambling of the tower of Babel, with physical swells of red ochre interpenetrated by black and white dots. The more you enter this painting, the more you realise how sophisticated and complex is the composition and how subtle the execution.

Tommy Carroll’s Nuguwarrding (Snake Dreaming) (2017) is another strong work in this exhibition. This is one of the Rainbow Serpent stories that deals with the snake that lived in the area now called Doon Doon, where Carroll was born in 1956.

The artist relates, "He went up to my grandfather's country at the back of Speewah where there are gorges and rock-holes … This snake was a father for this country, he travelled all over, sometimes he would stay for a few days then he would leave and pass through the next water place and stayed a bit longer."

In the painting, the solid circles represent the water holes while the fluid lines are the hills around Doon Doon.

Of work by emerging artists, Tracey Ramsay’s Ringgirin (2018) is one of the more interesting with its light palette and simple flowing forms.

The remarkable Gija artists have been preserving the living heritage of their country for a very long time and thanks to the Warmun Arts Centre they have been communicating this heritage to a broader national and international audience for 21 years.