3 December 2005 - 21 January 2006

DOROTHY NAPANGARDI

Australian artist, Dorothy Napangardi, conveys her sense of place with points of
paint. Every point is a marker and each marks a path. The results are aestheti-
cally enticing -- intricate, rhythmic, undulating skeins. However, the work tran-
scends its visual sensuality to communicate ideas of travel, trade, tradition and
spirituality. 'Dreamings,' the oral traditions upon which these paintings are
based, are mythical stories that acknowledge a 40,000 year-old relationship with
the land. It is in this context that Napangardi’s ‘landscapes’ find meaning beyond
their formal elegance. In her catalogue essay for the Museum of Contemporary
Art in Sydney's 2002-2003 survey exhibition, "Dancing Up Country: The Art of
Dorothy Napangardi," Christine Nicholls contextualizes the work and 'Dreamings,'
noting,

It needs to be remembered that Central and Western Desert art works, and the
narratives in which they are embedded, comprise high levels of information
about the environment, site-specific ‘deep ecology’, interactions between
species, as well as offering templates for human interactions and ethical and
moral guidance. The artwork itself acts as a kind of visual shorthand
representing these Dreaming narratives, which encrypt Indigenous social
memory, or what could be described as 'cultural DNA.'

Within Napangardi’s itinerant borders, dots of paint create a complex visual
corollary to a cultural landscape. Outside these borders, where these paintings
meet notions of ‘the contemporary,’ there exist a rich variety of references and
interpretations.

Dorothy Napangardi is exhibited in cooperation with Gallery Gondwana, Sydney.


MICHAEL LIGHT
Hover
Michael Light explores the aesthetic frontiers of landscape in this exhibition of
recent aerial photographs. Some Dry Space is a series of large black and white
photos of the Southern California and Nevada deserts taken from an airplane
flying at 300 to 1000 feet in elevation. While some images have identifiable
features and a familiar perspective of foreground receding to background, many
abstract to the point of appearing like lunar topography or pristine, snow-
covered fields. Shimmering light and velvety blacks transform these images into
anything but arid wasteland.

Los Angeles 02.12.04 extends the survey of desolate wilderness to the spraw-
ling metropolis. These photographs, also black and white, and shot from a
helicopter, share an unexpected resemblance to the gorgeous, barren vistas of
Some Dry Space. The snaking lines of freeways, tiny specks of cars, and low
circular Unocal oil refineries echo the fissures, ridges, rivulets, and low scrubby
bushes of Chidago Canyon, Montgomery Creek, and the Volcanic Tablelands.

This work is a natural extension of Lights previous projects. In FULL MOON, Light
printed large-scale color photographs from NASA transparencies of the first
space missions, creating a profound new view of the lunar terrain and the
spectacular effects of light in the vacuum of space. In 100 SUNS, Light rephoto-
graphed images of US nuclear bomb tests, offering an unsettling perspective, at
once seductive and terrifying, of the power of the sun unleashed on remote
desert test sites.
XXXXX

Mina Mina, 2005
 
Los Angeles 02.12.04: Looking Northwest,
Somewhere Near Torrance, 2004