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Art & About Sydney \ Exhibitions & Events \ Open Gallery

Exhibitions & Events

Open Gallery

When: 1-25 October
Where: George Street, Alfred Street, College Street, Elizabeth Street, Park Street, Oxford Street, William Street, Taylor Square, Kings Cross, Redfern Street, Erskineville Road and Glebe Point Road.

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Nothing Is Lost – Nothing Is Nothing – We Are Not Nothing

This year’s Open Gallery, Nothing Is Lost – Nothing Is Nothing – We Are Not Nothing, features 10 striking new works from Aboriginal artists living in NSW, and is presented in association with Campbelltown Arts Centre.

Sydney is an Aboriginal place. Aboriginal art is art made by Aboriginal people and as much as art can be a physical object; an Aboriginal mind and an Aboriginal person are works of art and a ‘dreaming’.

Aboriginal people continue to live, think, create, and to progressively thrive in New South Wales in great numbers.

What we draw on from our memories, and think, imagine and create in our daily lives is our dreaming, and our art is the spirit of these seemingly common everyday experiences in and from the land we belong to.

‘We paint the land’ is not a cliché, and it is appropriate that here and now we ‘paint’ Sydney.

Djon Mundine OAM,
Curator, Open Gallery 2009

Djon Mundine OAM is a member of the Bundjalung people. He is Aboriginal Curator, Contemporary Art at Campbelltown Arts Centre, and has held a number of key positions over his 25-year career. These include Senior Curator, Gallery of Aboriginal Australia, National Museum of Australia, Canberra, and Senior Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Programs at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Perhaps the best known of his many major projects is the 'Aboriginal Memorial' installation of hollow log bone coffins on permanent display at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

	Milton Budge Ration Day Times (Collecting Rations and Rations) An Aboriginal man is in a ration shed, behind the counter, serving food rations. Three Aboriginal women are dressed in uniform-type clothing, a small boy helps carry a baby in a dillybag. The white manager checks the correct handout. A boomerang shown above - as in full fast flight, being too fast for human eyes to follow as it twirls through the air.		Adam Hill U...R...an ' I ummmm ... we are AFAILINGLAND Typically urban Aboriginal art is a form constantly at war with itself, sceptical and mournful of the languages and systems it has been forced to adopt.
	Aunty May Hinch Untitled Our ancestors showed us how to survive and to be strong. And my way of life is to help our younger generation.		Warwick Keen PROUD In the face of ongoing suffering and adversity, Aboriginal culture and people have survived.
	Roy Kennedy I'm Never Alone This painting shows the movements of the mission and the surroundings.		Gordon Syron Meeting Place: Spirits of the Past and Present Generations of Aboriginal people gathered here asking for justice, land rights, equality in health, education, an end to deaths in custody, etc. Naming our heroes of the past and present is most important, Lest We Forget
	Harry Wedge Standing Around Harry portrays Indigenous life and issues, such as alcoholism and his childhood at Erambie Mission, West Cowra, NSW, with figures and landscapes outlined in contrasting colours on vibrant backgrounds		Graham Davis King Bat Kinship A painting about people's relationship to nature through bat/owl/ kangaroo through an Aboriginal calendar.
	Frances Belle Parker The Vein of our Existence Rivers are the core of all of our stories and the root of our creation. Rivers run like a lifegiving vein across the land.		Elaine Russell Forbidden Fruit This painting depicts Elaine's childhood in the 1950s in the mission, it is a story about three friends facing a flood.