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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  Australian Indigenous & Oceanic Art
• Sale Date:
  22 Jul 2014 ~ 6.30pm (Part 1 - Lots 1 - 198)
  23 Jul 2014 ~ 2.30pm (Part 2 - Lots 199 - 331)
• Lot #:
  76
• Lot Description:
  Paddy Bedford (Nyunkuny)
  (1922-2007)
  Jack Flood (2004)
  natural earth pigments and synthetic binders on linen
  150 x 180 cm
  signed 'PB' verso
• Provenance:
  Jirrawun Arts, Western Australia (PB-8-2004-186); The Estate of Paddy Bedford
• References:
  LITERATURE Michael, L. (ed.),ÊPaddy Bedford, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2006, p.155 (illustrated)?; Oliver, T., M. Langton & F. Kofod (eds), Blood on the Spinifex,ÊThe Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne, 2002; Petitjean, G. et al,ÊPaddy Bedford: Crossing Frontiers, AAMU Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Art Museum Utrecht, and Snoeck Editions, Utrecht, the Netherlands, 2009
• Notes:
  Paddy Bedford is perhaps one of the more enigmatic of the painters of the east Kimberley. His paintings traverse ideas of landscape, spirituality and history much in the vein of his artistic predecessor Rover Thomas (c.1926-1998). He painted a country that he knew intimately: a land created and sanctified by his Gija ancestors; a land painted with the very materials it yields; and a land stained with the blood of Gija kinsmen, women and children as gartiya (white) settlers usurped the country. Paddy Bedford only ever painted his country, inherited from his father and mother, most of which was subsumed by Bedford Downs Station in the first years of the 20th century. As has been the fate of many Indigenous people born on cattle stations during the period of colonization, he was named after the property. His Gija name was Nyunkuny and he belonged to the Jawalji section. Bedford was raised to be a stockman, working mainly on Bedford Downs. In Gija terms, he emerged as a senior ceremonial and law man. However, in the great social upheavals that befell Aboriginal station workers in the Kimberley in the 1970s, Bedford took his family to live in the Aboriginal community of Warmun at Turkey Creek. It was from here that Paddy Bedford joined the Jirrawun artists cooperative initiated by Freddie Timms (born c.1946) in 1997 and he commenced to paint for a world beyond the Gija, bringing to bear decades of ceremonial painting to his public art. Paddy BedfordÕs decade long career as a painter is marked by several milestones. In 2000 he and his countryman and brother-in-law Timmy Timms (Kamaliny Palmentarri, c.1920-2000) revealed a joonba or song cycle relating to a massacre of Gija and Worla people at Mount King that occurred a few years before Paddy BedfordÕs birth. The joonba was adapted to a public performance Fire, fire burning bright, at the Perth Festival of 2002. And it was a catalyst to the exhibition Blood on the Spinifex, at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne, in the same year. In 2006 the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, staged a major retrospective of BedfordÕs work, a version of which was shown under the title Paddy Bedford: Crossing Frontiers at the AAMU Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Art in Utrecht, the Netherlands, in 2009. In 2006, BedfordÕs Emu Dreaming, 2003, in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, was adapted as a permanent ceramic-fired glass installation at the MusŽe du quai Branly, Paris. And in 2013, Qantas based the livery of one of the companyÕs new airplanes on BedfordÕs Medicine Pocket, 2005, also in the National GalleryÕs collection. Throughout his career, Bedford returned to paint the most significant sites on his traditional lands time and again: Jack Flood is one such site. It is known by the Gija name Garnkoorlbany and lies in BedfordÕs fatherÕs country. Garnkoorlbany refers to a type of wattle tree, the seed pods of which are used for fishing: when soaked in water, the seed pods produce a soapy foam that stupefies the fish which float to the surface and are caught with ease. Jack Flood is the northern-most site in the country painted by Paddy Bedford. The temptation exists to read Paddy BedfordÕs paintings as maps of country, in this case an aerial perspective or plan view looking down to a waterhole. But the spaces he creates are intentionally ambiguous. As Michiel Dolk observes about BedfordÕs paintings, through the ÔÓspringingÓ contours from the edge of the painting É compositional relationships are elegantly resolved within the frame [that] simultaneously suggest a continuity of line and form in the space beyond [the picture plane]Õ (in Michael, L. (ed.), Paddy Bedford, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2006, p.39.) Wally Caruana
• Estimate:
  A$150,000 - 180,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.