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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  Fine Australian & International Art
• Sale Date:
  21 Nov 2016 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  38
• Lot Description:
  Lin Onus
  (1948-1996)
  24 Hours by the Numerili Moonlight, 1993
  acrylic on canvas
  92 x 122 cm
  bears Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi label verso; bears inscription verso: 044 SM6
• Provenance:
  Savill Galleries, Melbourne, 2004 (label verso); Private collection, Sydney
• Exhibited:
  Lin Onus, Denis Savill, Melbourne, 30 October?-?23 November 2003, cat. no. 7 (as Moonlight at Numerilli, 1993)
• References:
  Lin Onus, Denis Savill, Melbourne, 2003, cat. no. 7 (as Moonlight at Numerilli, 1993) (pamphlet)
• Notes:
  As a painter Lin Onus hoped to be seen as a 'bridge between cultures'1. Certainly his oeuvre comprising paintings, sculptures, installations and works on paper, produced between 1974 - 1996, reveal a masterful blending of western visual systems with the Indigenous understanding of spiritual meaning encoded in the knowledge of country. Born in Melbourne in 1948, Lin Onus was the only child of Bill Onus, a Yorta Yorta man and Mary McLintock Kelly of Scottish descent. Both parents were strong advocates for social change with Bill being the first President of the Australian Aboriginal League and Mary being an active campaigner for social equality and human rights. In turn, Lin Onus as an artist with a unique, powerful vision was able to impact on a wide cross-cultural and political arena. As a leading artist of the 20th century urban Indigenous art movement in Australia, Onus was one of the most successful and innovative artists of his generation, noted for paintings and installations that addressed a range of social and political issues with a telling irony and wry humour. While he was a virtuoso painter in terms of the western classical tradition of realism and a master of trompe l'oeil, his connection to his Indigenous heritage led him to seek inspiration from artists who as elders could mentor him into a greater understanding of the classical Indigenous ways of seeing the natural world. Onus's paintings in particular are compelling in their interpretation of the land and its fauna, especially experienced in the environs of his Indigenous ancestral region of the Barmah forest, located along the New South Wales side of the Murray River near Echuca. It was here that his father had grown up in the Aboriginal settlement of Cummeragunja, and as a child Lin accompanied Bill on regular return visits that continued into adulthood. It thus became for him a special place for cultural learning through stories told by his uncle Aaron Briggs, a cultural custodian known as 'the old man of the forest'. In 1986 Lin Onus was appointed to the Aboriginal Arts Board of the Australia Council and in this capacity he visited Maningrida in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, where he met Jack Wunuwun, a traditional elder who became his mentor and adopted him into the Murrungun-Djinang clan. Onus returned numerous times to Maningrida on what for him became a 'spiritual pilgrimage', and in 1988 Wunuwun gave him permission to use the rarrk (cross-hatch) design, which this highly esteemed older painter used on bark paintings. This was a major turning point for Onus. The provision of a new visual language was a 'form of spiritual awakening'2, symbolically revealing the ancient ways of seeing that had been shared with him and which involved as Wunuwun had expressed, 'going beneath the surface of things'3. This liberated Onus from struggling with the nexus of working in a Western manner while wanting to engage with his Indigenous background. It served as a way of healing his own sense of loss in terms of Yorta Yorta language and place. It thus enabled him to embrace a new style of painting in which certain elements, namely native fauna such as fish, frogs, bats, crocodiles, stingrays, lizards, goannas, tortoises and butterflies were realistically rendered and 'indigenised' by the over-layering rarrk design. Onus's watery landscapes such as the present work, with their myriad reflections of trees and clouds and the almost transparent x-ray fish among the reeds, challenge the viewer's perception, and are highly prized for their exceptional beauty and lyricism. They celebrate nature as a place of regeneration and wholeness, reminding us of the beauty, but also the fragility of the land and our relationship to it. Frances Lindsay AM 1 Lin Onus, artist statement, cited in Margo Neale et al., Urban Dingo: the art and life of Lin Onus 1948-1996, Craftsman House in association with the Queensland Art Gallery, South Brisbane, 2000, p.21. Also cited in Frances Lindsay, Lin Onus: Yinya Wala, Mossgreen, 2016, p.6 2 Lin Onus, quoted in Donna Leslie, 'Earth, spirit & belonging in Australian art', Spirit in the Land, McClelland Gallery + Sculpture Park, Langwarrin, 2010/11 p.19. 3 Margo Neale, ibid, p.19
• Estimate:
  A$150,000 - 200,000
• 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.