Alair Pambegan

Black, white and red. Powerful colours. Powerful images and stories of historical and contemporary Aboriginal knowledge and experience. Tony Albert and Alair Pambegan present collaborative and individual work which draws on traditional culture and contemporary urban life.

Sydney-based Tony Albert, who was born in Queensland, works in multiple art forms, including drawing, painting, photography and installation. Albert is a founding member of Queensland’s Aboriginal art collective proppaNOW. In 2014 he won the prestigious Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award, and was included in Dark Heart, the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art. His art is challenging, and conceptual and explores the political, historical and cultural issues signifcant to Aboriginal people in Australia today.

Alair Pambegan is a Wik-Mungkan man who lives in the Western Cape community of Aurukun in North Queensland. His late father was the highly respected elder and nationally renowned artist Arthur Koo’ekka Pambegan Jnr. Pambegan Jnr was custodian for Walkaln-aw (Bonefsh Story Place) and Kalben (Flying Fox Story Place), two signifcant ancestral stories of the Wik-Mungkan people. Alair Pambegan was handed down stories and responsibilities from his father, traditions he preserves while also creating compelling works that tell of the more recent past.

In the collaborative installation Frontier Wars: Bonefsh Story Place Albert and Pambegan reinterpret the traditional story by merging the shape of timber bullets with the shapes of large bonefsh into a powerful work.

In Pambegan’s work the strong stripes of red, black and white refer to the traditional body-painting designs worn during Wik-Mungkan ceremonies. In Walkaln-aw (Bonefsh Story Place) (2014) natural earth pigments and charcoal are used to create the linear and geometric elements of the composition

In the 3D piece Mother (2014), found garden rakes decorated with bands of natural pigment stand as powerful reminders of the inhumane treatment of Aboriginal women forced to work as often unpaid domestic servants. This is a personal story that resonates across accounts of colonisation.

In Tony Albert’s photographic series We can be heroes (2014), young Aboriginal men wear red targets on their chests, marks of their experience of negative stereotypes and treatment. The black, white and red of the works of Tony Albert and Alair Pambegan speak loudly of the past and the present. We can listen and learn.