Cambridge College returns 250-year-old Aboriginal spears to traditional owners

Spears removed from Kamay camp (Botany Bay) but Captain Cook and Joseph Banks 1770.

In a moving ceremony at the Wren Library at Trinity College, Cambridge the four spears were returned to traditional owners from La Perouse Aboriginal Community.

The spears were removed in 1770 by Captain James Cook and Joseph Banks from an empty camp. They were removed without permission after the explorers landed close to the encampment at Botany Bay (Kamay) which had been abandoned after the Gweagal men had been shot at.

It was initially thought - by Banks - that the spears were poisoned. However, his senior officer quickly realised the 40-50 spears they had collected were used for fishing and the “poison” was in fact a resin used to attach the bone tips to the shaft.

The traditional owners have sought to have them returned from Trinity College, Cambridge, since the 1990s. Michael Ingrey, a Dharawal man, said the spears’ return has been “a long time coming”.

He added: “The emotions are mixed…a lot of the old people that started the campaign aren't with us any more to see their hard work and labour come to fruition.”

The spears were given to Trinity College by John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich in 1771, along with other artefacts collected during Cook’s explorations. The spears have been held at the university’s Museum of Archeology and Anthropology since the early 19th Century.

The spears were among the first artefacts to be removed from Australia after initial contact, making them “exceptionally significant” and the last from that era to remain.

“They reflect the beginnings of a history of misunderstanding and conflict,” said Nicholas Thomas, director of Cambridge’s archaeology museum.

The wood used to make the spears can still be found on Country where they will be re-homed. Senior elders continue to teach younger generations how to make the spears in very much the same way these important artefacts were fashioned.

Community representatives Quaiden Riley Williams and David Johnson at the ceremony. Photo: Jenny Magee (Courtesy Trinity College Cambridge website)

Spring Art at Affordable Art Fair Hampstead Heath 8 - 12 May 2024 stand J6 VIP tickets

BRENDA PUNYTJINA ARMSTRONG, KALINY-KALINYPA / ULTUKUNPA JUKURRPA - HONEY GREVILLEA DREAMING (3859/19NY) 122CM X 76CM £1,800

Bay Gallery Home is looking forward to welcoming you to our Aboriginal art stand at the Affordable Art Fair on Hampstead Heath 8-12 May 2024.

We have a selection of bright and beautiful artworks across our botanical and Dreamtime collection. We’re also equipped with many stunning traditional coloured paintings to bring an earthy, dramatic mood to your home or work place.

Use the VIP link below to secure your ticket and we’ll see you there. Not long now!

MICHAEL JANGALA GALLAGHER, YANKIRRI JUKURRPA (EMU DREAMING) - NGARLIKIRLANGUNG (1076/23NY) 183CMX91CM £3200

Thank you for Coming to Affordable Art Fair Battersea

Bay Gallery Home thanks you for visiting us at our Spring stand in Battersea. We are returning for the Hampstead edition 8-12 May 2024. More details including the code for your VIP entry to follow.

Hope to see you there!

Cotswold Homes & Interiors Festival - Cirencester Cornhall Market 2 March 2024

Bay Gallery Home is excited to be part of the Cotswold Homes and Interiors Festival hosted by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.

The Cotswold Homes and Interiors Festival is a new event designed to showcase the many wonderful and diverse homes and interiors businesses in Cirencester and the wider Cotswolds.

There will be stalls in the wonderful Corn Hall, selling a wide range of products from soft furnishings to ornaments and art.  A series of free entry talks and demos with Q+A opportunities will also be taking place in the mezzanine area of the Corn Hall.

Pick up our festival guide at home, design, arts and crafts venues around Cirencester and spend your day in town, enjoying talks and demos, stalls, and eateries, while seeking out participating shops and businesses using the handy guide map.

Don't miss out on this exciting event that brings together the best of Cirencester's homes and interiors makers and doers.The event has been organised by Cotswold District Council and funded by the Government’s UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF).

Your VIP code for Affordable Art Fair Battersea is here!

Bay Gallery Home looks forward to seeing you on our stand in a few weeks. Get in touch if there’s anything on our website you particularly want to see and we’ll have it on the stand for you.

https://aafbattersea.seetickets.com/timeslot/affordable-art-fair-battersea-spring?OfferCode=G-BAY-COMP

Invitation to Affordable Art Fair - Hampstead Heath 8-12 May 2024 stand J6

Bay Gallery Home is delighted to invite you to Hampstead Affordable Art Fair in Hampstead 8-12 May 2024.

We have curated a wide range of Dreaming stories, bush medicine and bush tucker paintings in dazzling acrylic colours, styles and sizes including works by artists we are representing for the first time.

There are lots of lovely smaller paintings heading over for those looking to enter the art market. We also curated some fabulous large paintings for statement pieces. And our ever popular Desert Dogs will be returning.

In other exciting news we are joining Art Money so you can pay for your artworks over time. This means collectors can purchase works essentially using an art credit card. At the shows we noticed people are falling in love with our artworks but cannot pay the full amount on the day, missing out on obtaining the works that beguiled them. Art Money is the perfect way to help you pay in manageable monthly payments.

Fair sales of paintings and ‘My Country’ interiors collection are very important to the Central Australian Aboriginal artists we represent. Funds from the Aboriginal art industry directly impact their social mobility, health and education.

For your VIP tickets or to gain Access All Areas (if you are an avid collector or interior designer) please book your tickets using the links below.

Art Money helps you collect art

Some of the artists we are exhibiting: Penny Napaljarri Kelly, Ada Pula Beasley, Tracy Ngwarreye Peterson,

AI impacts on Aboriginal Art Industry

Athena Nangala Granites at work on original artworks on Country in the Northern Territory. A recent work by renowned artist Felicity Nampinjinpa Robertson, Ngapa Jukurrpa (Water Dreaming). Both are followed by AI generated “Aboriginal” artworks using the Night Cafe platform.

As AI slips rapidly into our lives unannounced like a thief in the night, the impact across creative industries is already being felt. New technology like Chat GPT are unleashing potentially catastrophic outcomes for many artists, including the already-vulnerable Aboriginal art industry.

A fascinating article on Crikey.com.au by journalist Cameron Wilson delves into the murky world of sacred Aboriginal artworks being bastardised to create AI artworks for sale on digital platforms including Ebay, Adobe and Shutterstock. To the untrained eye, you may not notice that images from different Aboriginal language groups are coagulated into an artwork trading as produced by indigenous artists across Australia.

What perhaps is more shocking is that AI generated images of Aboriginal paintings were used to promote a panel discussion at the University of Western Australia about the Voice to Parliament campaign. In another example covered by the Crikey article an AI image of an “Aboriginal” woman was used to promote the government-funded Mining and Skills Alliance to “raise the profile of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women”.

AI can present exciting opportunities for artists as they embrace new technology helping express their creative vision. However, the Central Desert artists we represent are drawing on their Dreamtime stories and their connection to Country, which is sacred on levels the uninitiated will never understand. But it speaks to us and you cannot replace the emotion you feel when coming across an Aboriginal artwork that crosses the divide and reaches into your soul.

Users generating Aboriginal AI fakes are failing to even acknowledge the real Aboriginal artists whose talent it is targeting. Indeed our Bay Gallery Home website and Blogs are scoured for content and regurgitated elsewhere with no heed for our copyright. What happens when AI starts devouring AI generated content? I’m not across the tech behind AI generated content but it would be interesting to know how AI protects itself from…AI. If you know please leave a comment below.

To read the Crikey.com.au article in full please click on the link below.

If you want to see to real Aboriginal artwork by Aboriginal artists creating artwork on their Country in the Central Australian desert visit the Bay Gallery Home stand D8 at Affordable Art UK Battersea in March. Click on link for your VIP tickets.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS, NEW YEAR AND CLOSING OVER THE HOLIDAYS

Janganpa Jukurrpa , (Common Brush-Tail Possum Dreaming), Steven Jupurrurla Nelson, 122cmx91cm £2,500

Bay Gallery Home wishes you all a Happy Christmas and New Year.

Thank you for continued support through difficult times. In 2024 we will continue to work hard to bring you beautiful paintings and products from the uniquely talented Aboriginal artists of the Central Desert in Australia via our Tetbury, Cotswold art gallery. We will also have stands at the Affordable Art Fair in Battersea and Hampstead Heath as well as the Spring Homes & Garden Fair, Sudeley Castle & Gardens.

While we will be closed from 14 December to 13 January you can still access the gallery if needed. Please call text or email Alexandra a day or so in advance so we can organise entry. Work will continue while we’re on holiday as we have an amazing collection of new works to upload so keep an eye on the website for first dibs on the new paintings.

Great Yorkshire Christmas Fair - 29 November - 3 December 2023

Bay Gallery Home is bringing our Aboriginal art, soft furnishings, homewares & accessories to York for the first time after years of being supported by the people of Yorkshire in our Tetbury, Cotswolds art gallery

We are excited to share the wonderful contemporary art by Central Desert Aboriginal artists, our award-winning ‘My Country’ interiors collection and the eclectic array of fine bone china and giftware we offer as the only dedicated Aboriginal art gallery in the UK.

So many unique gift ideas await visitors to Harrogate for the on Stand 4. You can use the link below to secure your free entry ticket using the code: EXHIBITOR

Athena Nangala Granites - Seven Sisters Dreaming Series

We met Athena painting alongside her sisters under the tutelage of her grandmother - renowned artist Alma Nungarrayi Granites. She is the great grand-daughter of Paddy Japaljarri Sims (deceased), one of the instrumental senior men in the painting of the now-famous Yuendumu school doors, as well as one of the founders of the art centre in 1985.

Athena says “I learnt to paint by watching my mother, my sisters and my grandmother paint.”

A successful younger generation artist, she uses the skills and techniques of elder artists, as well as embracing new methods she’s developed as her artistic practice evolves. Alma was no doubt hugely influential in her use of a broad range of colours and stylistic techniques including a hair brush to achieve the the sense of distant stars and galaxies.

In the desert, where you are removed from light pollution, you can see the many pops of colours in the sky reiterated in these paintings. Athena’s work is utterly compelling, bewitching people as it takes them to the Pleaides and the story of the Seven Sisters Dreaming.

The story is not unique to the Aboriginal culture but sits across many others from Egyptian and Greek mythology (where the name Pleiades comes from), as well as Indian and African folklore. It may be the oldest story in the world given it exists among cultures spanning the world. There is a theory it came out of Africa 100,000 year ago when humanity started migrating north.

Athena is one of the most important emerging artists from the Central Desert in Australia and this is the perfect time to invest in her work, if you love it and it speaks to you.

Athena painting at the Yuendumu art centre in the Northern Territory.

Invitation to Battersea Affordable Art Fair 18-22 October 2023

In October Bay Gallery Home will have our largest ever stand at the Battersea Affordable Art Fair in London with many large form paintings, curated in response to demand. It is due to your support the gallery has been able to grow to the point where we can exhibit these impactful, important paintings in an established market like London.

Among the new are works are paintings by Helen Nungarrayi Reed, Athena Nangala Granites and Chantelle Nampinjinpa Robertson, some of which you can see below. We also have works by Ada Pula Beasley, who recently had a sell-out show in Australia. Don’t miss the chance to own an artwork by the amazing Ada.

We also have four paintings by Steven Jupurrurla Nelson, whose career is reaching stellar heights with his selection for Salon de Refuses, part of the presitigous 2023 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (Telstra NATSIAA).

This year we also have bigger on-stand storage and a van on site so if you can’t find something you’re after on the stand, just ask us. We are likely to have something perfect stowed away for you. Or get in touch beforehand with paintings you’d like to see and we’ll have them ready.

For your VIP tickets click on the link below or scan the QR code. Bay Gallery Home looks forward to seeing you at the Battersea Affordable Art Fair! Feel free to pass the link on to friends/family/colleagues you also want to come.

Contact alexandra@baygalleryhome.com or call 07776 157 066 with painting requests.

Ancient medicines of Aboriginal Australia

Australian Aboriginal bush medicine is believed to have played a major part in the success of living off the continent’s landscape for more than 60,000 years. Much of the flora and fauna found on the huge landmass is unique. Across Australia, Aboriginal people developed bush medicine and used it to treat headaches, colds, skin infections and rashes, prevent pregnancy and cure many other ailments. Australia’s isolation meant it wasn’t subject to the devastating illnesses that stalked Europe.

Bush medicine is a testament to the profound interconnectedness of the indigenous communities to the ancient land they call home. The traditional healers also use spiritual realignment and smoking ceremonies using  Eremophila longifolia (commonly known as the Berrigan emu bush) producing a smoke with significant antimicrobial effects when heated. Traditionally the ceremonies were to mark the birth of a baby, initiation and circumcision of boys. Deeply rooted in their rich cultural traditions and spiritual beliefs, this holistic healing practice thrived amidst the harsh and arid landscape.

Intergenerational sharing of knowledge is essential for bush medicinal practice being maintained. Traditionally this was passed on through stories and ceremonies, as well as practice. Since what Indigenous groups more commonly term the 'Invasion’ of Australia, it’s become increasingly important to document the knowledge due to the fractured communities, loss of access to sacred sites and the assault by mining companies on Aboriginal lands.

One of the ways of maintaining botanical knowledge is through art (in an earlier blog, we covered the Batik art movement which features important bush medicine and bush tucker stories). Another is Aboriginal-led initiatives like the social enterprise Bush Balms run from Purple House in Alice Springs. Purple House is an Aboriginal-owned and run charity specialising in dialysis for Aboriginals from remote desert communities. Bush medicines were brought to patients by mothers and grandmothers more than 20 years ago, with many being created by elders over the fire at the house. This practice was the genesis for Bush Balm.

When my mother was working as a nurse in Utopia (Tanami Desert 300km north east of Alice Springs) a dog bit her. My mother said a very old Aboriginal woman emerged from nowhere and slapped a gooey paste on her injured leg and muttered advice to keep it there. Outnursing the nurse, the balm healed the bite would without an infection or scarring developing.

Collaboration with bodies like the Imperial Bio Science Review, Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and Curtain University aids the safe development and distribution of bush medicine-based products, while also providing business opportunities through the sale of bush medicine products, tourism and horticulture.

Little wonder mega-pharmaceutical companies now circle indigenous communities and their bush knowledge.

Now, more than ever, it feels important that Aboriginal communities across Australia protect their botanical knowledge and connection to their land.

Aboriginal bush medicines include eucalyptus leaves, Kakadu plum, witchetty grubs, desert mushrooms, and snake vine.

Fresh out of the Central Desert: more botanical beauties!

Over Summer visit Bay Gallery Home in the beautiful town of Tetbury, Cotswolds. While here you can visit the plethora of specialty shops selling art, antiques and lots of great cafes and restaurants.

AGNES PULA RUBUNTJA, AMEROO OUTSTATION (23-CC73) 91CMX91CM

£2,000.00

Acrylic on Belgian Linen

PAMMY KEMARRE FOSTER, OUT BUSH, 92CM X61CM (22-EP329)

£2,000.00

Acrylic on Belgian Linen

SUSIE NGWARREYE PETERSON, DRY COUNTRY (23-EP115) 76CMX61CM

£1,800.00

Acrylic on Linen

DENISE NGWARREYE BONNEY, DRY CREEK BED (23-CC61) 30CMX30CM

£250.00

Acrylic on linen

BENITA KEMARR WOODMAN, DURING RAIN TIME (23-CC59) 30CMX30CM

£250.00

Acrylic on Linen

In Tetbury town centre Bay Gallery Home offers a diverse collection of Aboriginal art for sale, ideal for people seeking a unique cultural aesthetic for their home. Each artwork tells a rich story, deeply rooted in Aboriginal heritage and symbology. From bold, vibrant dot paintings to intricate, botancial pieces, our collection provides a wide range of choices to suit any interior design style. The earthy colour palettes harmoniously blend with contemporary design elements, creating a captivating and balanced ambiance. There’s plenty of bright, colourful works as well if you need a pop of colour therapy in your home.

Many of our artists are accomplished award winning practitioners with long careers exhibiting all over the world. Bay Gallery Home is a great source of younger artists paintings embarking on what will be for many important careers guided by senior community elders.

If you’d like to make an appointment call Alexandra on 07776 157 066 or DM us on Instagram @baygalleryhome email: alexandra@baygalleryhome.com

Ancient Aboriginal Trade Routes - with Dr John Gardiner

Greenstone axe examples Image courtesy of Museums Victoria Collections https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au

Our friend, Dr John Gardiner, recently sent us his theory on Aboriginal trade.  It’s a fascinating read which led me to look more into the Aboriginal trade routes throughout Australia and with the Malyasian Maccassans who in turn traded with the Chinese and along the Silk Road.

Many of my clients have read The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin so are familiar with the complexity, breadth and depth of Aboriginal trade including a greenstone axe-producing quarry in at Mount William Stone Hatchet Quarry (known as Wil-im-ee Moor-ring) outside Melbourne. (Further reading suggestion can be found below).

———————-

By Dr John Gardiner

Recently I heard about how the native guava (bolwarra) is being decimated by myrtle rust, introduced somehow from overseas.  The bolwarra has gone from thriving in the Eastern rainforests to being critically endangered in only a few years.  Such a wonderful plant too.

This got me thinking about all the other Indigenous food plants we have that are really similar to food plants in Asia and elsewhere. Finger limes, native gooseberries, native grapes, native pomegranates among many others. Experts think that many of these plants were introduced to Australia thousands of years before colonisation and have subsequently adapted to, or been bred for, local conditions.

It could be argued that the plants were already present in Australia before the supercontinent Gondwana broke up, like the family Proteaceae: in Australia waratahs and South African proteas. Or that the plants came by wind, water, or on the wings of birds, bats or insects.

Let’s look at the Kimberley baobabs. Baobabs are only found native in the Kimberley and Madagascar/Africa/Arabia. The African Creation Story of how the baobab came to be upside-down is almost exactly the same as the Aboriginal Dreamtime Story and there are linguistic similarities between African and Aboriginal baobab names. Moreover baobab nuts have high vitamin C and long shelf-life so early Arabian seafarers would provision them to stave off scurvy.

It seems entirely plausible that the Kimberley baobab, and through extension other culturally important plants, were brought to Australia by people purposefully or by accident.

There are other tantalising clues to Australia’s rich historical past. An Ancient Greek coin found in the Wessel Islands off the Northern Territory that may be from pre-fifteenth-century Tanzania, a fifteenth-century bronze Buddha found in Shark Bay. Then there is the introduction of the dingo between 4000 and 8000 years ago or maybe even earlier.

Trade never happens in one direction.  So whoever introduced these food plants I mentioned must have gained something in return. There is a papyrus from Alexandria dating to the early first-century C.E. that shows a cassowary. Cassowaries are only found in Australia and the islands immediately to its north including New Guinea. There must have been a trade route by land or sea at this time.

Indigenous Australia has made some amazing technical advances over the millennia. The returning boomerang, circular breathing, ground edge stone tools. Boomerangs have been found in Florida and even in Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb. It has been suggested that various civilisations developed them independently.

Boomerangs were not introduced to Australia: it is known they were invented south of Sydney.  The earliest known record of boomerangs in Australia is around 20000 years, similar to the age of the a 23000 year old Polish boomerang made from a mammoth tusk.

I would not be surprised if the knowledge of how to make boomerangs made its way from Australia, across Eurasia, in return for trade in the opposite direction.  Australian Indigenous Culture may have been connected to, and contributed to, the rest of the world for a long time.

Two old boomerangs, left: an early stone carved hunting boomerang, Western Australia, right : an early highly curved returning boomerang, made from hardwood, Southeast Australia, early 20th century. Provenance: Lord Alistair McAlpine (1942-2014); a British businessman, politician and author who was an advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, he was a lifetime collector in many fields including Aboriginal Art. He was an early collector of the American painter mark Rothko and could easily see the sophisticated aesthetics of Aboriginal Art and artefacts. Image and text courtesy of www.carters.com.au

Bush Medicine and Bush Tucker paintings have arrived!

To celebrate Spring, Bay Gallery Home has secured a series of beautiful botanical works from the Central Desert in time for the Affordable Art Fair Hampstead Heath. We have curated a selection of them for you here.

As the only dedicated Aboriginal art gallery in the UK, we are lucky to represent Aboriginal artists living on Country with their languages, sacred sites, iconography and Dreamtime stories in tact. The remoteness of these communities and an absence of mineral wealth has helped protect them from the much of the exploitation seen in other areas.

The art centres engaged in painting their Country, bush medicine and bush tucker do soon in order to keep their stories sacred. However, the benefits of painting sales cannot be underestimated as it is their only industry. The artwork is also an important way to share knowledge with younger generations ensuring their culture is not entirely lost.

The joyful colours, fine dot work and broad brush strokes bring the canvas to life. The paintings are imbued with the history of the Country and artists’ ancestors who sing to them while they paint. You can almost feel their spirits pulsating from these artworks in a way that can’t be achieved with Western art.

During the art fair we are happy to offer you an interiors consultation to ensure you get the right art work for the living or work space you are looking to decorate.

Hampstead Heath Affordable Art Fair is May 10-14, 2023, and we invite you to secure your ticket to see these new artworks on the link below.

New Artwork for Affordable Art Fair Hampstead Heath

Be the first to see these fabulous new Aboriginal artworks at Hampstead Heath Affordable Art Fair 10-14 May 2023 using the VIP ticket link below.

Bay Gallery Home is really excited to catch up with clients old and new at the art fair. We’re on a bigger stand with the largest paintings we’ve ever had and an array of artwork from new artists and some who’ve been walkabout for a while. Having drifted back into the art centre they are producing lots of exquisite paintings which we’ll be sharing with you.

Please share the code with friends and family if they’d like to attend.

Happy Sunday! Alexandra .

Hidden Symmetries of Paintings from Yuendumu by John Gardiner

PATRICIA NAKAMARRA OLDFIELD, WARNA JUKURRPA (SNAKE DREAMING) (1039/23) 76CMX61CM

This fascinating paper by independent researcher John Gardiner is well worth the read. It deals with biology and mathematics involved in Aboriginal art or knowledge using them to create an incredibly moving account of how the Aboriginal people relate to the world.

Bay Gallery Home sells many paintings from Yuendumu including one featured in this paper. Below is another mathematical masterpiece we are taking to Hampstead Heath Art Fair 10-14 May 2023.

JANITA NAMPIJINPA GALLAGHER, NGAPA JUKURRPA (WATER DREAMING) - MIKANJI PAINTING NYIRRIPI - (00/23NY) 107CMX107CM

Invitation to Hampstead Heath Affordable Art Fair 10-14 May 2023

In just under a month Bay Gallery Home will be exhibiting a curated collection of wonderful Central Desert Aboriginal art at the Hampstead Heath Affordable Art Fair.

This Affordable Art Fair we have our biggest artworks yet! Look out for paintings by the incredible Walter Jangala Brown and Chantelle Nampijinpa Robertson - both clearly inherited their famous relatives talent.

You’ll find us on a larger stand than usual, with more offerings than ever before. There will be a lot of gorgeous smaller works and the metal painted dogs are back. New editions include etchings from Kununurra by celebrated artists Billy Jibilloorn Duncan and Penny Archie. Bay Gallery Home really wants to expose our clients to fresh works reflecting the growth in our artists’ practice and our growth as a gallery.

Please let us know if you want to see anything in particular after taking a look at our website and we’ll make sure it is at the show. We are still busily updating the website as the paintings land from Australia, so keep an eye on it.

Please click the link below for VIP tickets.

If you would like to apply for Access All Area passes we have a limited number to give away. Please email alexandra@baygalleryhome.com for the AAA code.

We look forward to seeing you there. x

Invitation to Battersea Art Fair, Spring 8-12 March 2023

Bay Gallery Home is back at Battersea Art Fair for the Spring edition and would love to see you there.

The Private View is 8 March from 1700 - it’s always a fun evening out and the chance to view the many new beautiful works we have before anyone else does. Amongst our latest offering are new works by highly sought after artists including Ada Pula Beasley, Pammy Foster and Steven Jupurrurla Nelson.

If there is anything you would like to see in particular please let us know so we can make sure it’s at the show on the day you are attending. Over the next week or two we will be adding more paintings to the site so keep an eye on Bay Gallery Home’s website and Instagram for images and details.

You can apply the code using the link on the button below for your VIP tickets to the show.

See you there!

2023 begins with New Art from Tennant Creek, Australia

Bay Gallery Home wishes you a Happy New Year! Refreshed after a glorious holiday we have exciting news to share with our friends and clients for 2023. We have embarked on a collaboration with artists from Tennant Creek, Northern Territory, Australia.

Among the artists we have are Ada Pula Beasley and Pammy Foster, both rising stars in the Aboriginal art world. Their impressionist paintings, achieved with careful brush and dot work, are breathtakingly beautiful.

Ada paints her Country, many recent works by Central Desert artists depict the devastating fires, She explains: “After the bushfires, when the rain comes and brings back all the bush flowers and bush medicine back again and make it green, this [is] why I do this painting, reminds me when we go hunting after the bush fire and see just black, then it rains and brings flowers back and the trees and the blue skies, and the snappy gum trees up the hill."

Pammy Foster takes an abstract approach to the depiction of Country. Her work captures the rhythm of the landscape with repeated motifs and engages an exaggerated palette to emphasise seasonal changes in the environment.

These and many other beautiful works from the our desert communities will be available online and at the Spring Battersea Affordable Art Fair 9-12 March. VIP codes for VIP tickets will be shared with you shortly.