Karijini

Artists
Jane Tangney, Tjanpi Desert Weavers
Exhibition
Karijini
Year
2018

Jane Tangney

Jane Tangney is a Western Australian artist immersed in the ever-evolving genre of landscape painting. Her sensitively observed works are richly nuanced responses - not only to place, but to broader notions of the human condition. Jane’s use of colour, paint handling and compositional forms are a lyrical blend of restraint and complexity. Heavy impasto paintings in oil and beeswax are often juxtaposed with works on paper that invite intimacy and lightness.

Jane has been exhibiting in group and solo shows since 1998. She has been selected as a finalist in 8 Glover Prizes and was recently highly commended in the Hadley’s Art Prize 2017. Her works are held in private and public collections including Artbank, Curtin University, City of Fremantle and The Westin Hotel Group. She is among 50 artists featured in a book, due for release in October 2018. Written by Amber Creswell Bell and published by Thames & Hudson, the book celebrates contemporary Australian landscape painting.

DOWNLOAD THE CATALOGUE

Tjanpi Desert Weavers

Tjanpi Desert Weavers is a social enterprise of the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (NPY) Women’s Council created to enable women in remote central deserts to earn their own income from fibre art.

Tjanpi represents more than 400 Aboriginal women artists from 26 remote communities on the NPY lands. The NPY lands cover approximately 350,000 square kms across the tri-state (WA, SA, NT) border region of Central Australia.

“It is good work, women’s work. Even the oldest women make baskets. The young kungkawara (adolescent) girls also make baskets. All the generations of women make baskets now and we feel assured that women will continue making baskets long after we are dead and gone. We women are all basket makers now! Basket making is a great form of income-earning for us, yet it is a very pleasant occupation as well… what better kind of work is there? …It is strong and important work. We are happy doing it.” Paniny Mick, Amata SA

DOWNLOAD THE CATALOGUE

Artist Statement - Jane Tangney

"As a landscape painter, I am interested in notions of identity and connection to place.

This new body of work was inspired by a recent trip to Karijini (Banyjima name for the Hamersley Range) situated in the Pilbara region of WA. Within the range is the stunning Karijini National Park - traditional home to the Banyjima, Kurrama and Innawonga people. Nearby lies the ghost town of Wittenoom - a place of significance to my grandparents and dad who moved there in 1947, unaware of the health risks this newly established asbestos mining town would later pose. Wittenoom is a place cemented into the psyche of WA. It’s an ongoing industrial disaster of epic proportion, inspiring Midnight Oil’s anthemic song, Blue Sky Mine. For me it has always been a place of intrigue. As a child I heard adults talk – I sensed their anxiety. Maybe hearing the words ‘ghost town’ sucked me in, or the characters who’d come by Nan’s place with beer, leathery faces and funny stories - ‘Nor’westers’ Nan called them.

Pop died from Wittenoom’s blue asbestos dust when I was a baby. Nan was a nurse/midwife in Wittenoom and various other towns - eventually settling in Broome. She was an amazing gardener with a keen interest in bush medicine – insect bites and sores were always treated with her concoctions. This probably came about through friendships formed with Aboriginal women over the years – some of whom I recall visiting on road trips to and from Broome as a child in the 1970’s.

At the age of about six, I remember staying with Flo and Frank who lived somewhere near Point Samson in a rusty corrugated iron shack. It was pretty rough when I think about it. They were generous people and meant something to my Dad as a young boy in Wittenoom. Their son Jonny was his friend. I remember they camped outside with Dad - giving up their own bed for Mum, my sister and I.

Within this body of work, I aimed for pared-back compositions about colour, open space, deep gorges, shadows, lungs/breath, silence and connection to family now deceased. Nan was lucky. She lived into her nineties despite using asbestos tailings as mulch around her Wittenoom roses. She was an optimistic, capable woman who instilled in me a great respect for Aboriginal people’s knowledge, resilience and humor. She would be happy to see my work displayed beside the remarkable Tjanpi Desert Weavers - many of whom are from the Ngaanyatjarra Lands of Western Australia".

Jane Tangney, 2018

Q&A with Jane Tangney

Jane Tangney’s Karijini exhibition opened in the Koskela Gallery on Saturday, 28th July, and had almost sold out within hours. Customers who got their hands on an advanced copy of the catalogue purchased artworks over the phone or online without seeing them in person. It was the fastest selling show Koskela has ever had.

Her heavy impasto paintings and works on paper appealed equally. It seemed everyone wanted to get their hands on a piece of Jane’s stunning and, at times, haunting interpretation of the Karijini National Park and and ghost town of Wittenoom in Western Australia.

We chatted to the softly spoken artist to find out more about her art practice and the personal significance of the Karijini show.

What was your path to becoming the artist you are today?

I went to six different primary schools. Drawing was a constant in my life. It helped me assimilate as the shy, ‘new kid’. I went to one high school – a public school with an amazing art scholarship program that involved going to school on Saturdays just to do art. Practicing artists taught these classes. They were really different to the weekday teachers, with some smelling like turps and tobacco while others were fashionably 80’s. I looked up to them all and they probably influenced my decision to study fine art at university. After graduating I travelled and worked overseas, where I saw famous paintings in the flesh for the first time. During this time I worked in journals. Occasionally I look at them now and I’m amazed at the energy and enthusiasm of my younger self. I scribbled down thoughts and drew everywhere I went. Most of the writing is really cringe worthy, but they’re still keepers. I’ve kept up a consistent art practice since then – quietly and steadily going about my work with other creative strings to my bow.

What part of your art practice brings you the most joy?

A few years ago a young woman introduced herself to me at an exhibition. She said her Mum had purchased a painting of mine many years ago and it still took pride of place in her Mother’s home. She described how she had grown up with this piece and how it was a part of her family. I found this very moving.

I also derive joy from being out in nature, drawing and painting in my sketchbook. A sketchbook is a place where I can try things out and fail – a place where I can scribble out an idea or play with colour. Without them, I would find the blank canvas very daunting.

What influences your work?

The internet has changed everything, making the world far more intimately connected. I regularly look at international art, yet at the risk of sounding parochial I am drawn back to my own culture and the culture of Indigenous Australians. I read somewhere a while back that globalisation is shaking off the ‘provincialism problem’ in Australian art. For me, provincialism is a choice. There is nothing more inspiring and authentic than an artist immersed in their own surroundings, telling their own stories. Australian artists such as Rosalie Gascoigne, Churchill Cann, Steven Harvey, Jenny Sages and Kevin Lincoln come to mind when I think about artists living and working within my lifetime who have been influential to my practice.

What is the theme for your show at Koskela?

The works at Koskela are inspired by a road trip to Karijini (Banyjima name for the Hamersley Range) situated in the Pilbara region of WA. Within the range is the stunning Karijini National Park and ghost town of Wittenoom – a place of significance to my grandparents and dad who moved there from 1947 to the mid 1950’s, unaware of the health risks this newly established asbestos mining town would later pose. Pop died from Wittenoom’s deadly dust when I was a baby. Nan was a nurse/midwife there – later settling in Broome.

The works are about colour, open space, deep gorges, shadows, lungs/breath, silence and connection to family now deceased. Nan was lucky. She lived well into her nineties despite using asbestos tailings as mulch around her Wittenoom roses. She was an optimistic, capable woman who instilled in me a great respect for Aboriginal people’s knowledge, resilience and humour. She would be happy to see my work displayed at Koskela beside the remarkable Tjanpi Desert Weavers – many of whom are from the Ngaanyatjarra Lands of WA.

What do you love most about your home state of Western Australia?

I love the raw and bewildering beauty of Western Australia. Being so vast it is a place of contrasts from red deserts to beaches with sand so white and fine that it squeaks when you walk. I had not explored Karijini National Park thoroughly until this recent field trip. Although it isn’t a secret spot, it is high on my list of places to see.