Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that the following review contains references to a person who has died.
Since its inception in 2003, Revealed has been an annual program bringing Aboriginal art and artists from all over the huge and diverse state of WA to Boorloo/Perth for an art market, exhibition and other events in the local Noongar season of Djieran, or late autumn. For over a decade it’s been held at Fremantle Arts Centre, but this year Revealed is taking place in the wounded heart of the Perth CBD – to be more precise, in the Perth Cultural Centre, which somewhat ironically is currently a construction site in the midst of being demolished, excavated, re-landscaped and rebuilt (one could almost say, re-colonised).
Sadly I missed the one-day art market this year, which was held in the forecourt of the WA Museum Boola Bardip in early April, and included talks, performances and live art demonstrations, as well as guided tours of the monumental Spinifex People exhibition at the Museum.
Unlike Spinifex People, which was a retrospective exhibition focused on the art, culture and history of the Traditional Owners of the Great Victoria Desert on the border of WA and South Australia – including their dispersal before and after the British nuclear tests at Maralinga in the 1950s, their subsequent return and pursuit of native title and the birth of the Spinifex art movement – Revealed is a wide-ranging cross-section of contemporary work from Aboriginal art centres and independent artists across WA, including the Pilbara and Kimberley regions up north, the Mid West and South West, as well as more remote communities of the Western Desert.
There’s a huge diversity of artists from different generations at various stages in their career working in genres and media; but a strong sense of coherence and vision is imparted by the astute choices of the selection panel, the careful curation and installation of the exhibition at PICA (including just enough information about each artist and work on the walls), and the impact of two other First Nation works that effectively frame the entire experience.
Prominent among these is Badimia Yamatji and Yued Noongar artist Amanda Bell’s sprawling conceptual work F = m⋅a (five ways to make a rainbow), which responds to the location and architecture of PICA itself (including the construction site that surrounds it and is visible through the windows) with an assemblage of fleeting sounds, shifting natural light and haunting text. The words are a Noongar translation of a song by US rock band Rage Against the Machine about continuity and power in the past, present and future, which leads us up the central stairwell to the first floor and around the walls of the balcony that overlooks the central atrium space. It’s a multilayered and subtly disturbing work and an effective overture to the entire exhibition. (A tormented semi-abstract painting by the same artist downstairs is further testimony to her transcendent command of media and communicative power.)
Also on the first floor in the large upstairs gallery space is Gudirr Gudirr, a massive three-channel video installation by Vernon Ah Kee in collaboration with dancer/choreographer Dalisa Pigram and Marrugeku Dance Theatre. The work juxtaposes images of Pigram dancing or shouting obscenities (which also appear as fragments of text), Kimberley landscapes and gas refineries, a lizard with its head stuck in a beer can, a song by Stephen Pigram, social media footage of kids filming themselves fighting in car parks and luminous photo-portraits of First Nations faces, young and old. The title refers to the call of the migratory wading bird called guwayi (the bar-tailed godwit) when the tide is turning, and the work is suffused with a sense of urgency, which hangs over the rest of the works on display downstairs.
These are collected on the walls and floor of the central atrium and adjoining gallery annex. There are too many works and artists to enumerate here: some that stand out include the gorgeous feather, bead and painted canvas body adornments by the women of the Yamaji Art Collective near Geraldton; the vibrant dreaming-story acrylics by Martumili artists Dianne Marney, Damien Miller and Brett Bidu in the remote East Pilbara, which contrast with the more flowing blocks of colour used by Warmun artist Eddie Daylight in the East Kimberley, or the more dynamically textured patterns of Bidyadanga artist Chloe Jadai, who lives and works in Karratha.
The’s also the playful raffia, wool and wire bird sculptures by the women of the Tjanpi Desert Weavers; the astonishingly accomplished photos by young kids in the Juluwarlu Photography Collective of people, dogs and vehicles on Yindjibarndi country in the Pilbara; the powerful print dresses designed and made by Noongar artist Charlotte Ugle; the vivid and haunting landscapes and totemic animal paintings by anonymous First Nations prisoners ‘in the care of the Department of Justice’; the violently expressive abstract acrylics (they may once have been called art brut, ‘outsider art’ or even action paintings) by young non-verbal neurodivergent Yued/Yuat artist Ethyn Amat who lives and works in Goomburrup/Bunbury.
Also in the mix are the witty and polemical works by Boorloo/Perth artist Emma-Lee Maher, including an acrylic-painted esky satirically entitled ‘Boundary’ and decorated with crudely drawn maps and silhouettes of ‘tribal’ people gathered under streetlights; the poignant and dream-like figurative landscapes by much-loved and deeply mourned Wongi/Ngaanyatjarra artist Michael Banks who lived and worked in Ballajura; 17-year-old Broome-based Kathleen Clifton’s delightful acrylic Whale Sharks Swimming; and a startling pair of Wandjina paintings by sisters Samantha Allies Wungundin and Tanisha Allies Wungundin from Mowanjum Arts Centre in Derby.
Read: Book review: The Good Daughter, Kumi Taguchi
These are just some of this reviewer’s personal highlights in an exhibition to be relished and pondered, as another annual cycle completes itself, the season of Djieran moves into Makuru (winter), and the guwayi bird calls urgently for change.
Revealed 2025: New and Emerging WA Aboriginal Artists will be exhibited until 15 June 2025 at Perth Cultural Centre.
See Jo Pickup’s micro review reel on ArtsHub‘s Instagram account
