Pedro Wonaeamirri
Pedro Wonaeamirri’s art has been highly awarded. Still, there is a clear sense that his responsibilities lie first and always with his Tiwi community, where he is a senior cultural man. His ninth solo for Melbourne’s Alcaston Gallery, where he has exhibited since 1991, is titled Ngiya Purrungbarri – My Bark Painting (2024). For the first time, this exhibition comprises exclusively bark paintings, a tour de force that speaks to the artist’s understanding of long-standing Tiwi traditions, and to Japarra, the moon man, who is central to Tiwi understandings of life and death, water and the sea.
Image credit: Pedro Wonaeamirri, Pwoja-Pukumani - Body Paint Design, 2024, locally sourced ochres on stringy bark, 109 x 96 cm. Courtesy and © The Artist, Jilamara Arts & Crafts Association and Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne
Pedro Wonaeamirri’s story is remarkable by any stretch. His recent achievements include speaking at the 2024 Venice Biennale as part of the Indigenous Visions seminar, and performing at the museum housing the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. He mentored emerging Tiwi artist Jonathan World Peace Bush for the Country Road + NGV First Nations Commissions for My Country at the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia (2024), and in 2021 he won the prestigious Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award for Multimedia, having been a finalist eight times since 1994. He was awarded an Australia Council Fellowship in 1996 and won Young Australian of the Year (Arts) in the Northern Territory in 2000. His work is in all Australian institutional collections, as well as being represented internationally in the Kaplan & Levi Collection (US), British Museum (UK), and the Commonwealth Institute (UK).
Of his work, Pedro Wonaeamirri says, “The songlines relate to body paintings; the designs that I paint are like body painting and face painting. Tiwi culture is completely different to the mainland.”
Alcaston Gallery director and founder Beverly Knight met Pedro 33 years ago, when he was only 17 years old. In 1989, Pedro was already a celebrated dancer, and Beverly told VAULT that “it was evident, even then, that his peers ordained him to be a great leader.”
This latest exhibition, shown through September to October 2024, was his ninth solo show with her gallery. Pedro, who turned 50 years old in 2024, worked for two years to produce the bark paintings for Ngiya Purrungbarri. Beverly believes tha ... Subscribe to read all articles in full
