In her third solo exhibition with Galerie pompom Nana Ohnesorge continues her quest to highlight Aboriginal people and culture in a series of portraits and narrative paintings. The work aims to foster the visibility of Aboriginal people and to illustrate elements of the cultural and spiritual richness of the oldest surviving culture in the world.
Ohnesorge has adapted two uncredited images from illustrations in historic periodicals as well as a 1900 photographic portrait of a North Queensland warrior. These figures are used as representatives of their culture in the portraits, which illuminate the connection between people and country. For Ohnesorge the portraits demonstrate the strength, spirit and beauty the artist has encountered in her ongoing engagement with Australia’s First People.
The main figures act like protagonists on a stage of the artist’s imagination in the large painting Dark Light, depicting an immersive dreamscape of a moonlit bay showing traditional Aboriginal life with a sinking colonial ship at the centre. The young girl has a defiant facial expression, and a fluoro pink brushstroke that hints at censorship issues in contemporary art in Australia. Animals, birds and plants are used for their totemic and symbolic meaning and embrace the interconnectedness of all living and ancestral beings in traditional Aboriginal culture. The various elements in the painting form an open narrative to allow the viewer to create their own story.
This new work is also about the artist’s interaction with painting itself, with a strong focus on the visual stimulation and ongoing engagement of the viewer with the work. By using and layering painted squares and dots that mimic the dots in offset printing, the figures start to dissolve and are then in need of reconstruction on the part of the viewer, becoming a vehicle for imaginative memory and the re-imagining of history.
As a European migrant to Australia, Ohnesorge engages regularly with members of the Aboriginal community regarding her work.
Photos: Docqment
