Custodians: Country and Culture

Due to unexpected circumstances arising from the Drama Centre Foyer refurbishment, the exhibition ‘Custodians: country and culture’ has been relocated to the Festival Theatre foyer.

The exhibitions are  open and available for viewing 9am – 5pm Monday to Friday and during theatre performance times to 30 January (Closed 26 January).

For information about the exhibition please call 8216 8600.

Limited edition Folio sets or individual prints are available for sale.

Custodians: Country and Cultureis a boxed folio collection of new limited edition etchings, screenprints and relief prints by ten outstanding Indigenous Australian artists well known for their creative achievements. Each artist is exploring the notion of custodianship as it relates to them; be it their custodial role in land-management or ceremony, or their ownership and maintenance of particular stories or law.

Ten of the finest and highly respected Indigenous artists currently working in Australia from remote communities across the Kimberley region of Western Australia and Australia’s tropical top end and Central Desert regions of Northern Territory have been carefully selected and invited to collaborate with specialist printmakers of Basil Hall Editions. The high quality, limited edition prints have been hand printed to sell both as complete sets in cloth-bound folios (only 25 produced) and as individual prints (a further 20), making this small run a highly desirable investment for collectors of fine art.

Celebrated painters or well-known for their individual representation of iconic imagery, the artists were selected on the strength of their artistic output and cultural standing. Artists include Bardayal Nadjamerrek AO, Gawirrin Gumana, Gulumbu Yunupingu, Regina Wilson, Jean Baptiste Apuatimi, Lena Nyadbi, Jangangoo Butcher Cherel, Kathleen Petyarre, Dorothy Napangardi, Judy Napangardi Watson.

CLICK HERE to download the Custodians Catalogue.

Co-published by Basil Hall Editions, Nomad Art (Darwin) and Alison Kelly Gallery (Melbourne), Custodians comes as a boxed set (limited to only 25 sets) but the prints are also available individually.

Basil Hall has been collaborating on printmaking projects with artists since the early 1980'sOver the last 25 years, Basil and his teams of printers have produced several thousand editions of etchings, relief prints, silkscreen prints, collagraphs and lithographs for major and emerging Australian and international artists.

In the last twelve years he has been based in the Top End of Australia and now works almost exclusively with Indigenous artists from most Australian states and territories, but primarily from remote communities in NT, WA and SA. Projects have included the Yuendumu Doors suite of etchings, which won the Telstra Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2000 for Works on Paper, Milpatjunanyi (sand stories) for Ernabella Arts, Injalak Suite for Injalak Arts in Oenpelli , Custodians Country & Culture (2008) and After Berndt (with Buku Larrnggay Mulka in Yirrkala).

Image: Dorothy Napangardi Salt on Mina Mina
Etching, 50 x 39cms
© 2008 Collaborator: Basil Hall, Printers: Basil Hall & Merran Sierakowski
Courtesy of Gallery Gondwana, Alice Springs & Sydney