Exhibition Essay:

Top 50 - Most Collectable Artists

Every January, the prestigious journal Australian Art Collector publishes its list of the current top fifty most collectable emerging and mid-career artists along with extensive commentary on the artists and their works.  The list is fascinating for its overview of contemporary Australian art and has been including important Aboriginal artists for some years.  Art Mob has taken the new list as a starting point for its current show, celebrating the featured Aboriginal artists along with other artists from earlier Australian Art Collector lists.  The show is an excellent opportunity to view – and acquire – some of the very best examples of current Aboriginal artmaking.  

The featured artists in Top 50 include Queenie McKenzie (also known as Minmarriya and Garagarag), Ningura Napurrula, Elizabeth Marks Nakamarra, Gloria Petyarre, Ronnie Tjampitjinpa, Eubena  (Yupinya) Nampitjin, Minnie Pwerle, Lilly Kelly Napangardi, Dorothy Napangardi and Makinti Napanangka, all of whom have made the list in previous years.

Most of these artists are represented in major private and public collections have featured in many group and solo shows and have received important awards and prize.  They represent some of the most significant Aboriginal art communities in the country.  All the artists express a strong love for and bond with their country.

Their works cover the gamut of contemporary Aboriginal art styles, techniques and themes –  delightful quasi-naïve figurative depictions, strong ochre colours, rich linear design, paintings of sacred ceremonies, dot paintings, experiments with line, form and colour, ideas of reconciliation and of bridging the gap between European life and Aboriginal life, as in the paintings of Ronnie Tjampitjinpa.  There are powerful works such as those of Eubena Nampitjin, who has such a spontaneity and strength of brush mark that she virtually carves her paint. Minnie Pwerle’s canvases are based on body painting designs. Lilly Kelly Napangardi captures the ephemeral nature of her country and Makinti Napanangka distills body-painting designs to their quintessential forms.

Artists featured in the 2007 list and in this exhibition are Lorna Naparrula Fencer and Dennis Nona.  Fencer uses vibrant colours and is ‘one of the most visually intuitive of the senior indigenous painters’ Nona is one of the best exponents of linocut printing in Australia.

Diana Klaosen  2007