Lockhart River Collaborations | FireWorks Gallery

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Selected works

FW19189 Colour scheming	FW19191 Frontier sky	FW19192 Rain stones
FW19890 Flirting	FW20549 Island stone rush	FW20560 Rain stones
FW20561 Rain stones	FW20619 Rain stones	FW20621 Rain stones
FW20622 Teahching stones	FW20623 Rain stones	FW20624 Other worlds
FW20625 Teaching stones	FW20626 Teaching stones	FW20627 Shoreline family

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Bio & CV

Left to Right: Samantha Hobson, Fiona Omeenyo, Michael Eather & Rosella Namok at FireWorks Gallery 2019. Photo by Mick Richards

SHORELINES – Lockhart River Collaborations

Rosella Namok, Samantha Hobson, Fiona Omeenyo & Michael Eather

Exhibition statement

Recent paintings by four Queensland artists prompt us to think about shorelines as more than boundaries between water and land. They put a lens on shorelines as visual symbols of a collaborative mindset and a creative co-operative where waves of different ideas overlap and gently build into something new – something unexpected and fresh.

Rosella Namok, Samantha Hobson, Fiona Omeenyo (three leading artists from North Queensland’s Lockhart River) and Brisbane-based artist, curator and gallerist, Michael Eather, have teamed up over the past few years in numerous art workshops where they bounce off one another in developing their art. This creative connectivity naturally evolved into collaborative artworks where a visual conversation takes place between the four artists and different cultures working on shared ideas.

All these artists have a long history of artistic collaborations. Rosella, Samantha and Fiona began their professional careers as members of the Lockhart River Art Gang in the 1990s – a collaboration of the first youth-driven Indigenous art movement to gain national and international recognition.

Michael’s collaborative background began in the late 1980s when he commenced plans for the 1990 Balance exhibition at Queensland Art Gallery, bringing together artists from remote Indigenous communities, non-Indigenous contemporary art and what was then very under-recognised ‘urban’ Indigenous art. The network of artists involved in this exhibition evolved into the art collective called the Campfire Group. It would go on for nearly twenty years as one of the most inspirational, innovative and ground-breaking artist collaborative groups in the country.

In Shorelines, the artists show different dimensions of their work in this collaborative frame. Two symbolists converge in collaborative pieces by Fiona and Michael. Both artists seem more inspired to commit to a specific but enigmatic narrative. Together they produce a powerful visual story set in a shoreline across different cultures.

Samantha and Michael come together on canvas as fire and water, the poet of paint responds to the quiet master of symbols.

The master colourist Rosella seems to shroud Michael’s symbols in her evocative palette and the combination produces an explosive shimmer that seems to erupt from under the paint and from an energy that reaches deep into the subconscious and emotional register of what it means to be part of the human race.

Associate Professor Sally Butler, University of Queensland November 2021

Story/Statement

SHORELINES – Lockhart River Collaborations

Rosella Namok, Samantha Hobson, Fiona Omeenyo & Michael Eather

FRONTIER SKIES (SERIES): Rosella Namok & Michael Eather 2021

Rosella’s big impressionist skies speak directly of her Far North Queensland homeland. Intense colours of tropical sunsets and the drama of threatening storms merge coastal landscape with the artist’s Indigenous narrative. Michael’s contrasting imagery of industrial forms (smoke stacks & water coolers) sets up frameworks for a contested space - (nature vs. culture; skepticism vs. activism). Both artists attempt to balance these seemingly opposing visual elements as contemporary moments in time. The hovering stingray sometimes appears in the sky as a voyeur or witness.

RAIN STONES (SERIES): Rosella Namok & Michael Eather 2021

The Stinging Rain imagery of Rosella has developed over recent years to become a powerful and evocative landscape arrangement merging sky and water. Michael’s shadowed coloured stones bring these forces of nature to earth balancing all these elements both philosophically and compositionally to offer spatial tranquillity.

SANDBEACH STONES (SERIES): Samantha Hobson & Michael Eather 2021

Samantha brings the energy and oceanic surge of the tropical north, evoking a musical expression across the canvas, song lines and survival stories. Michael’s beach textures and coloured stones refer to his coastal fascinations stretching from Tasmania to Northern Australia. This demarcation of land and sea, solidity and fluidity summons the stillness of a remote beach lifestyle amidst the ebb and flow of time and tide.

FLIRTING (SERIES): Samantha Hobson & Michael Eather 2021

Samantha’s sandbeach and wave bust expressions create a playful scenario to situate Michael’s stingrays, blue for boys and pink for girls. A mischievous narrative of hunting and role play is on display.

TEACHING STONES (SERIES): Fiona Omeenyo & Michael Eather 2021

Fiona’s distinctive imagery features configurations of traditional families alongside ancestor spirit figures. These images evoke ideas of nurturing, watching over and ‘looking out’ for each other. Michael’s tumbling rocks and stones appear to embrace the blurred spaces between land, sea and sky. The dramatic interaction between these forms and figures pose questions of what we might learn from a collective ‘human nature’.

GHOST SHIP HORIZONS (SERIES): Fiona Omeenyo & Michael Eather 2021

Michael embellishes Fiona’s painterly horizons with nostalgic images of oval portals and the mirage of a three-masted tall-ship. This image denotes the symbolic presence of three Australian historical chapters: First Nations, British Coloniser, and the subsequent Immigrant waves. Fiona and Michael’s ’s shared imagery evoke the idea of displacement and discovery, the mystery of both new and ancient landscapes.

COLLECTIONS

Works by the artists who make up Lockhart River Collaborations are held in private and public collections both nationally and internationally, including National Gallery of Australia, Queensland Art Gallery, National Gallery of Victoria, Gallery of Modern Art, Cairns Regional Gallery, Commonwealth Courts, Parliament House, University of Queensland Art Museum, Queensland University of Technology Art Museum, Griffith University Art Collection, International Education Services (IES), Artbank, Thomas Vroom Collection Netherlands, The Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA & Columbus State University, Georgia, USA.

Past exhibitions

SOLO

Shorelines 2022

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