Spirit of Place - Amanda Westley & Kudditji Kngwarreye

Amanda Westley returns for her second exhibition at Japingka Gallery. Her paintings evoke the coastal landscapes around her home country at Victor Harbor on the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. Amanda’s family are Ngarrindjeri people and Amanda credits her maternal grandfather with her natural inclination towards art and the cultural background of her family.

Amanda Westley creates artworks filled with the flow and energy of life along the coast. There are the rhythms of the waves and the sea, the falling away of the cliffs down towards the sea. The colours are of both land and sea, showing the interaction between the two along the land’s edge.

The paintings are about landscape and place, yet they are a personal story for the artist, a part of her own story of  journey back to her family inheritance. Amanda’s first solo show in 2018 was a major step towards bridging that gap between the private world of art at home and the role of professional artist.

Kudditji Kngwarreye who passed away in 2017 documented the many facets of his homelands at Utopia where he was a senior custodian for the Emu Dreaming sites. Kudditji expressed the essence of the Country through rain and drought, through fire and natural abundance. His style encompassed an abstract use of blocks of colour that put before us the sense of the seasons and the changes in the country. His paintings capture light and the tones that change through the hours of the day. Kudditji Kngwarreye is one of the great colourists of the Aboriginal Desert art movement.

View: Kudditji Kngwarreye Artworks