Pila – Spinifex Lands

The remote and isolated communities in the far south-east of the Western Desert, home to the Spinifex Arts Project, continue to develop their remarkably bold and striking style, which goes from strength to strength.

This new body of work has an incredible presence: stories that can be seen but not seen, what lies hidden, what is shown, there is an undeniable sense of connectivity, and the sense of some other source, be it spirituality or a knowing, deep down inside the depths of country, as much as it is within the artists themselves. The ability and maturity of Spinifex mark-making has been alluring audiences for over ten years now: and it is the power of these marks that is still so enduring, growing ever more potent.

The web-like depiction of country is contiguous between artists, such as elder Simon Hogan, Fred Grant and Kathleen Donegan. Colours resonate over a matt black background; Roy Underwood’s snake’s writhe and wriggle through country.

Then there are the qualities of abstraction in its purest form of simplification: from the composition of Anmanari Brown’s Kuru Alawith its combination of red, white and pink, to the most divine, and purest sense of negative space, the ethereal and enigmatic work of Carlene West.

This exhibition is not to be missed during the Darwin Festival and over the opening weekend of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards.