Currently logged in. Logout
Australia’s oldest Indigenous gallery, Cooee Art, has relaunched as Cooee Art Leven, ushering in a new era for the gallery under the stewardship of long-term owner and Director, Mirri Leven.
While maintaining its strong focus on Indigenous art, Cooee Art Leven will expand its gallery model to exhibit non-Indigenous alongside First Nations artists through specially curated individual projects. The new gallery vision will focus on transparent dialogue, offering an opportunity beyond the ordinary commercial relationship between artist and gallery, fostering an environment of openness and direct exchanges between artists. Cooee Art Leven will work directly with First Nations curators, art centres, and represented artists and continue to travel regularly to remote areas of Australia to develop its exhibition program.
Neil Ernest Tomkins, Slow Down (Kitty’s House Again), 2023, acrylic on linen, 90 × 120cm
Recently, Cooee Art Leven travelled to the remote town of Lajamanu in the Northern Territory, bringing along Sydney artist Neil Ernest Tomkins for a weeklong painting workshop at Warnayaka Arts, alongside Warlpiri artist Kitty Napanangka Simon. The art centre’s Warlpiri owners opened a common space giving artworks room to communicate with each other throughout their creation. The resulting dialogue is free of cross-over interference, occurring naturally during the painting process – osmosis fuelled by mutual inspiration. Other participating Warlpiri artists include Annie Napanangka Simon, Biddie Napanangka Timms, Robin Napurrurla Lawson, and Isaiah Tjungurrayi Lewis.
Kitty Napanangka Simon, Mina Mina Jukurrpa (Mina Mina Dreaming), 2023, 120 × 90cm
Curated by Gadigal artist Kate Constantine (Konstantina), the inaugural exhibition, country X Country, features work created in the Northern Territory Warlpiri community of Lajamanu by artists Neil Ernest Tomkins and Kitty Napanangka Simon, organically exploring themes around the craft of landscape painting, ways of seeing, and translating land and Country. A major shared theme is the artists’ process of layering perception and memory, expressing their view of landscape as an act of recognition and blending. On view from 27 July to 26 August 2023.
