WORKS BY LEADING ABORIGINAL, TORRES STRAIT ISLANDERS AND WESTERN AUSTRALIAN ARTISTS

Abie Loy Kemarre inherited the right to paint her Bush Leaf series from her father, and she depicts only the aspects of the story that belong to women.

The leaves in Abie’s paintings are from the plant ‘lpomoea muelleri’, which grows in swampy areas near sandhills in her grandfather’s country. Its leaves have curative properties for a multitude of ills.

A striking feature of the Bush Leaf works is the painstaking detail in each individual leaf. From afar, the work’s sumptuous and fluid surface movement captures attention. When close, the viewer is further entranced by the detail in the leaves themselves.

Powerful optical effects are in play in these paintings. The inferred association between their spiralling movements and physical disorientation is endorsed by the known pharmacological properties of the leaves themselves.

In the Trellis variants of these works, the centrifugal compositional structure of the Bush Leaf compositions is further emphasised by the utilisation of alternative spiralling arcs of leaf.