Deviate | Araluen Collection

Deviate – to depart from an established course

This exhibition explores artists who push the boundaries – diverging from a conventional path – challenging traditional art-making techniques to enable new outcomes to surface. The artists engage us with their diverse processes that culminate in artworks that are both innovative and original, featuring bold colour or unique mark-making, incorporating new materials, or themes. While primarily drawing from the Araluen Collection this exhibition also includes Western Desert paintings on loan from the National Gallery of Australia through the sharing the national collection initiative. These significant works mark the inception and evolution of this contemporary art movement that originated in Papunya in the early 1970s.

Paintings by renowned Western Arrernte artist Albert Namatjira are featured throughout the exhibition highlighting the artist’s diverse practice, expertise, knowledge of Country and ongoing influence. Namatjira commenced painting with watercolours at Ntaria/Hermannsburg in 1935 and quickly gained prominence as a celebrated artist on a national level. Billy Benn Purrurle is also featured with works that are part of a substantial recent acquisition of some 88 paintings that reflect the breadth of his artistic career. Benn is a prominent Alyawarr artist of Central Australia whose first paintings emerged in the late 1990s leading to the establishment of Bindi Mwerre Anthurre Artists in 2000 to support his painting endeavours. This dynamic artist studio has achieved incredible momentum in its support of Aboriginal artists living with disabilities in Mparntwe/Alice Springs in their artistic pursuits. In addition to Benn, other key Mwerre Anthurre artists – Adrian Jangala Robertson and Charles Jangala Inkamala are also included.

Alison Alder’s artwork Carcass 2009, which won the Alice Prize in 2010, is a screen-printed triptych that draws inspiration from Sidney Nolan’s carcasses painted in the early 1950s after a trip to the Northern Territory. In response to these stark paintings, Alder has crafted striking minimalist forms. The exhibition also features local non-Indigenous artists Rod Moss, Faye Alexander and Dan Murphy. Moss captivates us with his thick application of paint, effectively capturing the colour, energy, and scale of Central Australia in Camp dogs at Pine Gap 1991. Meanwhile, Alexander’s Hybrid 2016 made from found metal, evokes a sense of softness, calmness and gentle kinetic energy that belies the nature of the very material – shards of spiked metal and wire. Murphy also gathers found materials, profoundly weathered by the environment, to ‘construct’ the landscape in a unique manner. The work of renowned Australian artist John Wolseley offers an analysis of dust through his meticulously considered and finely detailed etching a vocabulary of dust – Simpson Desert 1993. In this delicate piece, you can almost feel the dust fragments pressing against your skin.

The Araluen Art Collection consists of many remarkable creative moments, movements, and prize-winning works, this exhibition focuses on a single, yet pivotal element: the boundless capacity of artists to innovate, regardless of their inspiration. Spanning decades, genres, and subjects, these artworks – thought-provoking and undeniably unique – invite viewers to deeply engage with the artists' creative explorations, as exemplified by Indigenous artist Robert Andrew’s White wash over the burn 2017 as he exposes historical truths that have since been silenced or ignored. Through this exhibition, the Araluen Collection challenges us to not only appreciate the artists' brilliance but also to actively participate in their creative journey.

Featured Artwork: Robert Andrew White wash over the burn 2017. Winner of the 2018 Alice Prize