A New Generation; A New Perspective
SmithDavidson Gallery has been a prominent advocate and educator internationally for Australian Indigenous Art since 2006. Following the positive responses to the gallery’s presentation at Art Cologne 2022, including front page coverage at the Kölnische Rundschau newspaper, the gallery’s proposal for 2023 highlights the specific era between 1985 and 2010 of the ‘Second Generation’ painters.
An era in which female painters, often the wives of deceased male ‘First Generation’ artists, take the lead and whose innovations greatly expanded the art movement.
Utopian artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye is without a doubt the most notable artist from this era and her ability to experiment with both subject matter, composition and color has changed our understanding of ‘Australian Aboriginal Art’. At the same time artists like Nyurapayia Nampitjinpa - or ‘Mrs. Bennett’ as she was the wife of the late artist John John Bennett - and Naata Nungurrayi, expanded the art of the Western Desert with new color schemes and subject matters; telling their own stories inspired by the Women’s Dreamings hidden from the male perspective and, up to that point, also from the art world at large.