Bush plum: The contemporary art of Angelina Pwerle
Moving image: Explore cultures and art making around the world
“One can see the seeds of the bush plum being blown by the Dreamtime winds and the tracks the women make as they go about the business of collecting the bush plum for food. Or perhaps it is the cosmos above charting the country below”.
Duration
14.30
Director
Peter and Andrea Hylands
Cinematography
Rob Pignolet and Andrea Hylands
In making this film the Creative cowboy crew have worked with old friends and made new ones. Our warm thanks to the community at Camel Camp and beyond, to Marc Gooch and Janet Pierce of Artlore and to William Nuttall of Niagara Galleries whose dreaming was to make this film.
Central Australia is a place of extraordinary power and beauty, the art from this place is a mirror, a spiritual reflection of beliefs, of culture, of country, of its plants and animals.
The film Bush plum is a contemplation of the work and country of Angelina Pwerle, a visual poem, capturing the imagery and connection between painting and country. For Angelina, her bush plum dreaming paintings reflect “the whole thing, all of country”.
Desert country to major art institutions around the world
Angelina's delicate and peaceful paintings are created by using a fine stick, each of the many thousands of dots in a painting are applied individually. The paintings are often large in scale. The work itself becoming a contemplation in the artist’s mind. The state of painting creating the opportunity for meditation and focus, the execution is painstaking and precise and continues for many days.
For Angelina, her art life is a hectic one. She has now had seven major solo exhibitions and has exhibited in group shows in Australia, China, United States Spain and Germany. She has worked on major commissions including for the Commonwealth Law Courts in Melbourne, Australia.
Angelina’s work is held by major public galleries in Australia, United States and Japan.
In 2011 Angelina Pwerle took part in an exhibition E(merge): two spiritualities. This extraordinary exhibition brought together two artists from two very different cultures, Angelina and Hu Qinwu, in the Space Station Art Gallery in Beijing’s 798 Art District. The exhibition then came to Canberra where it was shown at the Drill Hall Gallery. This film was shown as part of the exhibition.
Reg Newitt, the exhibitions curator says:
“For each artist, the process of working is critical to the end result – the subconscious state of allowing the Dreaming (Angelina) or the Kong (the Buddhist idea of empty space) to emerge and reveal the infinite (space, time) the order and chaos of the universe, the continuity of life and the connectedness between past, present and future”.
There are both differences and remarkable similarities in the work of these two artists, connected by the strength of their spirituality and their ancient Aboriginal and Chinese cultures. The works are beautiful and serene.
Far away from Beijing and a few weeks after the end of the Beijing exhibition, we visit Camel Camp in Central Australia, both Angelina’s home and workplace. It is here we make the film.
Highlights from the documentary
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