Making Contact: New Works from Gabriel Maralngurra and Nancy McDinny presents a landmark account of history of Australia from its traditional owners.

Indigenart, The Mossenson Galleries, in conjunction with Injalak Arts and Crafts, Waralungku Arts and the Melbourne Fringe Festival is proud to present this historic exhibition. The exhibition will be opened at 6pm on Thursday 28 September 2006.

Indigenart is pleased to announce that both Gabriel and Nancy will be travelling to Melbourne fro the exhibition opening.

As small children, Gabriel Maralngurra and Nancy McDinny listened to the stories of their forebears. These stories were rich in mythology and lore; they spoke of ancestral beings, sacred places and the creation of the land. They were important stories that had been passed from generation to generation since the Dreaming. Other stories, however, were much newer. These stories told of the arrival of Europeans or balanda in their tall-ships, wagons and automobiles.

These are the stories of Making Contact; a historic new exhibition that offers a rare and privileged visual account of the colonisation of Australia from an Indigenous perspective.

Gabriel Maralngurra was born in 1968 at Gunbalanya (Oenpelli) in western Arnhem Land. In recent years, Gabriel has begun using the traditional rarrk of Arnhem Land to depict a different set of stories. These ‘contact’ stories deal with the upheavals that have faced the Indigenous inhabitants of Gunbalanya since the arrival of Europeans.

Beginning with the arrival of anthropologists like Baldwin Spencer, Gabriel chronicles the challenges and changes that the arrival of Europeans has caused. These include the introduction of clothing, television and western conveniences, along with the distressing effects of alcohol, drugs and tobacco.

Gabriel’s paintings represent a defiant statement of cultural strength and an ability to negotiate the modern world on their own terms.

Gabriel has exhibited to acclaim throughout Australia, as well as in Europe and the USA. He has been a four-time finalist in the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award and his works are held in important collections across Australia, including the Melbourne Museum.

Nancy McDinny hails from Borroloola, south west of the Gulf of Carpentaria. This is a wild country in which crocodile infested rivers tumble from stony ramparts through long and treacherous plains of deep sand and coastal scrub before making their way to the sea.

For European settlers, this country represented Australia’s last great frontier. To its 2,500 Indigenous inhabitants, however, these lands had been the physical and spiritual home for more than 35,000 years. With the opening in the 1870s of the Coast Track – one of Australia’s largest and most profitable stock routes – these two cultures were thrown suddenly and often violently together.

In her paintings, Nancy recalls the stories of the Gulf frontier as they were told to her by her father Dinny McDinny and her grandfather Jim Ross. Her paintings show unique observations of the arrival of explorers and pastoralists like Leichhardt, along with dramatic evocations of the frontier, including cattle-running and bushrangers like the Monaghan Gang.

Since commencing painting in 2002, Nancy has exhibited to praise across Australia. Making Contact will be her second exhibition at Indigenart after a sell-out exhibition in 2005.