ART GALLERY |
This page brings together some artworks related to Aboriginal country music because I am an art lover and an artist myself too - who is presumptuous enough to include some of his own works here! - and I thought people might just enjoy it. Some of these artists were directly inspired by Buried Country; so much so that the BC roadshow is now providing further inspiration, as illustrated by the portrait at left here of Franny Little, which Reg Lynch, who has another artwork at the bottom of the page, rendered from our show at Dark Mofo in Hobart in June, 2017. But most of the artists were inspired by the music and the musicians themselves; some are black artists, some white, some males, some females, but all of them, I think, capture an essence of the subject at hand:
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JON LANGFORD |
Jon Langford is the Chicago-based Welshman who's been making music and art for four decades now, and who was so inspired by Buried Country when he came across it that he not only painted a whole suite of portraits of its stars, but went on to link up with Roger Knox and produce him on the album Stranger in My Land, which was released by Bloodshot Records in 2012. Jon is a great friend of Buried Country; the book contains a couple of his artworks, and it's his image of Billy Bargo that forms the visual centrepiece of our roadshow marketing. See (and maybe buy something from!) a range of Jon's work - and he specialises in music- and country music-related subjects - at the Austin, Texas, gallery that represents him, Yard Dog, here...
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VINCENT NAMATJIRA |
Vincent Namatjira has exploded onto the art scene in just recent times, and while his work resembles not a whit that of his great grandfather's, that’s partly why he is such a noble extender of the family tradition – because he has found his own voice – and what a vibrant, irresistible voice it is. Indeed, counter to his great grandfather’s signature landscapes, Vincent seems to specialize in portraiture. And while his series of recent Prime Ministers was all very well – but do you really want to linger over images of John Howard and Tony Abbott? – it was the triptych of portraits he entered in the 2017 NATSIAAwards that, well, certainly prompted this entry here, with its renderings of Jimmy Little and Lionel Rose alongside David Unaipon; Unaipon was no country singer but in the interests of structural integrity his portrait has been retained. Also added below an earlier portrait of countryman country singer Jimmy Pompey, which has become the cover artwork for the BC LP… see a bit more on the artist here and here
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JIMMY POMPEY... |
… who himself is not only a country singer but also a painter, like Vincent Namatjira aligned with Iwantja Arts at Indulkina south of Alice Springs. Iwantja is producing some amazing artists generally, so see a bit more on all that here. Pompey grew up as a singing cowboy, in effect, and as he says, his paintings are how he remembers that… making all those in his long-running 'Cowboy Story' series like self-portraits?
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JANDAMARRA CADD |
Jandamarra Cadd is another friend of Buried Country; the book contains a reproduction of his wonderful dual-portrait of Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter. Jandamarra is Yorta Yorta and Dja Dja Warung, based on the NSW central coast, and for him art is a way of life, a way of telling the stories of black life in Australia. He has exhibited widely and the portrait here of Archie Roach was a finalist in the 2014 Archibald Prize. To see more of Jandmarra's work - and maybe buy some! - go to his website here.
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ADAM CULLEN |
Adam Cullen was a controversial artist who died too young in 2012. Like many artists he was a huge music fan; he worked in his studio to the strains of punk rock, and he left behind portraits of two of the greats of Aboriginal music and Australian music generally who have sadly passed away too...
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IT IS I..! |
... and I can't deny it was Jon Langford and his Buried Country-inspired portraits that inspired me to pick up again on doing illustrations like I hadn't done since I dropped out of Brisbane Art College in 1976. I thought, if he can do it, so can I! And in that I found a medium for telling the story of black women in Australian music, a sort of sister-sequel to Buried Country called Deadly Woman Blues, which was published in early 2018 but quickly withdrawn from sale to be pulped amid great controversy. Here's a portrait of Brewarrina country singer Essie Coffey from this now absent work:
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HARRY & WILGA WILLIAMS |
Leading their band the Country Outcasts through the 70s/80s, Harry and Wilga Williams were the godfather and mother of Koori country, and when I came to do a portrait of Wilga for Deadly Woman Blues, I was drawn to the same photo (I'd totally forgotten - honest!) that Jon Langford also based his portrait of the pair on. It makes for an interesting exercise in compare/contrast: I've set mine against a background of the Grandview Hotel in Melbourne, where the Country Outcasts legendarily held down a residency for a big chunk of the 70s, and Jon his against an image of another of the great country couples - and Harry and Wilga's namesake - Audrey and Hank Williams.
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ARCHIE ROACH |
I couldn't say I really know Archie Roach very well, but we've crossed paths on numerous occasions over the years, and I can say I understand why he's been such an attractive subject for portraitists: because he is such an extraordinary man - talented, humble, warm, generous, courageous... so in addition to the Jandamarra Cadd portrait above, see here one by Wiradjuri artist Robert Henderson (left) and one (at right) by Maleny musician/artist Peter Hudson:
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DAN SULTAN |
Country-rock'n'soul singer/songwriter Dan Sultan is one of the hottest young properties on the Australian music scene, and as such he has already been multiply painted, by Carla Fletcher (on the left, an Archibald finalist in 2014) and Jandamarra Cadd (on the right):
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ROBERT CAMPBELL Jr. |
Robert Campbell Jr. was one of the trailblazers of urban-modern Aboriginal art. Born of the Ngaku people in Kempsey in 1944, he began painting in his teens before moving to Sydney. After a while working in Sydney he returned to Kempsey and started to paint in earnest. To paraphrase fellow Kempsey native Slim Dusty, he painted "the things I see around me," including Slim himself. Because as white a fella as Slim was, he was a major influence and inspiration for Aboriginal country music – so much so that Campbell portrayed him twice; along with his Archibald-finalist portrait of another Kempsey-countryman Mac Sliva, the singing drummer who was a pillar of Aboriginal music in Sydney. Silva died in 1989 aged only 42, and Campbell a few years later in 1993 aged just 49: both tragically too young as Aboriginal men tend to do. You can read an obituary on Campbell here.
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REDBACK GRAFIX |
In November 2012, I went along to the late-lamented Damien Minton Gallery in Redfern to see a posthumous exhibition of recent work by Michael Callaghan, who had just passed away, and I was reminded again just what a great and important artist he was. Callaghan was the driving force behind Redback Grafix, a design and screen-printing collective that produced a great many politically-charged images and posters that have become iconic in Australia. Beginning life in Wollongong in the late 70s, Redback generated a number of graphics for CAAMA in the mid-80s like the two below, the poster with Isaac Yamma centre-stage, the other of Bob Randall. You can read an obituary on Callaghan here that takes in a lot of the history of Redback, and buy a lovely little catalogue of the studio's output from the National Library here.
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SHANE JACOBSEN |
Shane Jacobsen (no, not the actor! it’s spelt different anyway) started out sending in a fan letter and ended up contributing some of his beautiful fan art below, if I can use a term that’s much-maligned. I love fan art and consider my own illustrations as part of the same lineage. Shane is a project manager for the city council in Geelong whose passions are music and art, especially original Australian music and art. He is a member of two bands, Gypsy Smash and Ukes d’Jour, and he was so inspired after encountering Buried Country – “everything’s about connection,” he says – he had to get down the below portraits of Auriel Andrew, Bob Randall and Jimmy Little in his watercolour class, based on some of the B&W pix in the book. He asked, Did I think Jimmy Little would wear purple? Oh yeah, I said, I think so!
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REG LYNCH |
Great cartoon by Reg Lynch, another true friend of Buried Country:
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