Yondee Shane Hansen

Yondee Shane Hansen Biography

Yondee Shane Hansen is a Perth-based Noongar artist. He was born in 1964 at Dumbleyung, 270 km south-west of Perth. He grew up in WA’s southwest around Narrogin and later near Guildford on the outskirts of Perth. The story of his early life and his attraction to painting gives a strong idea of how his life story feeds into his role as an Aboriginal artist.

The artist’s bush name, Yondee, means Black Goanna.

Art in Yondee’s Childhood

Yondee was taught about hunting and shown sand drawings by his father. Around the age of ten, he would travel and visit his aunties on the Swan River and would collect paper bark to help them with their artwork. It was here that he started to learn about art from his older relatives, who are known for their painting on paper bark. Yondee remembers this time: “The bark had been burnt and then soaked. We would float it in the river, and then the old people would grab it, put it in hessian bags, take it up the hill, and dry it out for a couple of days. They’d use flour and water glue and charcoal for paint.”

Yondee remembers when he began painting. “I started painting with house paints that we found on the rubbish tip. That was at the Reserve at Narrogin. I started drawing with charcoal, drawing on the light grey logs that had no bark. I love the simplicity of black and white, the strength. The black is fire, and the white is the tree. From childhood, that’s why I mostly paint black and white paintings.”

“Later on when we moved to the outskirts of Perth, to Swan View, we would walk down to the river and light fires and collect paper bark. Art was all around me – in the paddocks when the flowers came, in the fields and the crops, along the rivers and around the rocks.”

“We moved around, working on the land and hunting. My Grandfather sang Noongar songs. My grandmother spoke the full Noongar language and was influential in our lives. She would make dampers and a big pot of stew. The old people would eat first, and then we kids. When it ran out, that was it. There was no hot water, just the copper, which was heated up from the fire. The five kids would line up and jump into the bath early before it got too hot.”

Current Practice

Talking about his art practice today, Yondee Shane Hansen says, “I make sand paintings, collecting sand from the creeks. You have to wash it to get the salt out, but the sand is different out of the creeks; it’s smoother. When you have washed it a few times, sieved it, and mixed it with paint, it’s good to use. When I make sand paintings using black and white, it’s a simple, strong message.”

An experienced and accomplished artist, Yondee Shane Hansen has developed ways of working with sand and ochres to depict the stories and legends of his people. He also paints detailed figurative works based on mission life, hunting and animals. His works are abstract in their presentation but narrative in their content.

As a child, Yondee Shane Hansen learnt his grandfather’s ground paintings and feels the translation of them to sand paintings does them justice and brings them to new audiences.

Yondee Shane Hansen has painted with the Campfire group of Aboriginal artists in Brisbane as well as exhibiting his work in galleries in Western Australia, New South Wales, Queensland, and overseas in USA and Ireland.

Selected Exhibitions

• 2011     In Black and White, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
• 2019     Landscapes of Colour, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
• 2019     Japingka Gallery exhibition in collaboration with RAC WA
• 2022     Derbal Yerrigan, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

Public Artworks

South Perth – Mindeerup: Karl Kep Ngoornd-iny (which means Fire and Water Dreaming)

Read More:

• Yondee Shane Hansen – Artist Profile
• Exhibition: Yondee Shane Hansen – Derbarl Yerrigan – Oct 2021
• Exhibition: Landscapes of Colour – Feb 2019
• Exhibition: In Black and White – 2011