Biddee Baadjo Paintings

Wangkatjungka artist Biddee Baadjo shared much of her artistic style with painters from the Balgo Hills area, using thickly painted dots with intense colours to create her works. However, late in her career she began painting with broad bands of colour representing the sandhill structures of her desert homelands, created with a dabbing motion that connected her to the earlier dot paintings.

These late paintings created spirals of alternating colour, bands moving out from a small desert waterhole lost in the shifting movements of the sandhills. Biddee Baadjo knew this country well, having travelled all over with her family when she was young. Biddee Baadjo was lucky to have survived when as a small baby, an eagle attempted to grab her and fly away. She was soon found where she had fallen into the grass.

Biddee Baadjo’s traditional country is desert lands around the waterhole called Piyurr. The waterhole itself is named after a small bird that makes a call that sounds just like – piyurr, piyurr. This country of the Great Sandy Desert has no surface water, and knowledge of its underground soaks and springs is critical to both animals and humans for survival. Biddee and other Wangkatjungka people have incorporated knowledge of the water sources into song cycles, a learned body of knowledge that has been passed down through the generations.

Biddee Baadjo’s paintings record the main feature of the Great Sandy Desert- its expansive sandhills and its waterholes.  Biddee’s paintings capture this terrain and show the critical important of knowledge of its water sources. The mapmaking of semi-nomadic people is at the heart of Biddee Baadjo’s painting, as is a deep reverence for this traditional country that was the ancestral home to countless generations of the artist’s family clan. A selection of paintings by Biddee is available from Japingka Gallery, where collectors can buy Aboriginal art online with certainty of quality, authenticity and provenance of art works. Aboriginal art status – Established artist.

Selected Group Exhibitions

2004     Wangkatjungka Women, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle, WA
2004     Jila & Tali – Waterholes and Sandhills, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra, ACT
2004     Paintings from Wangkatjungka, Fire-Works Gallery, Brisbane, QLD
2004     Striking Colours of the Living Desert – Wangkatjungka Country, Walkabout Gallery, Sydney, NSW
2004     Artists of Wangkatjungka – Stories of Country, Raintree Gallery, Darwin, NT
2004     Tali and Jila, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle, WA
2005     Artists of Wangkatjungka, Hogarth Gallery, Sydney, NSW
2005     Yirmpurr (Living Water) Recent Paintings from Wangkatjungka, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra ACT
2005     Wangkatjungka Artists, Walkabout Gallery, Sydney, NSW
2005     Wangkatjungka, Ladner and Fell Gallery, Melbourne, VIC
2005     Wangkatjungka Artists: Stories from The Great Sandy Desert, Tandanya, National Aboriginal Cultural Institute Adelaide, SA
2006     Wangkatjungka Artists, Hogarth Galleries, Sydney, NSW
2006     Wangkatjungka – Artists of the Great Sandy Desert, Art Mob, Hobart, TAS
2006     Wangkatjungka Group Exhibition, Helen Maxwell, Canberra, ACT
2006      Luminaries of the Desert, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle, WA
2007     Wangkatjungka Mapping Country, Japingka Gallery. Fremantle, WA
2007     Desert Mosaic, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle, WA
2008     Wangkatjungka Artists: Canning Stock Route, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle, WA
2009      Desert Rains – Wangkatjungka Artists, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
2009     Kids and Mentors, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

Solo Exhibitions

2009     Biddee Baadjo, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA