Thuringowa Annual Indigenous exhibition 1999
An annual exhibition devoted to North and Far North Queensland Indigenous art is part of the popular community- focused program of Thuringowa City Council's Pinnacles Gallery. This year's exhibition, Out of Bounds, included art from the Lockhart River 'Art Gang', and Townsville/Thuringowa-based Indigenous artists including TAFE students and the Behind Barbed Wire artist's group of Mount Stuart Prison.
The Lockhart River Community, eight hundred strong, is a remote district cluster of now loosely defined clans living between beach and rainforest over eight hundred kilometres north of Cairns. It is a community in which strangers and those not connected to local family cannot escape notice. From before 'time' these clans lived in small groups along this coast, until missionary intervention in 1924. Traditional hunting and fishing are still a part of daily life, and dance performance is characterised by the swish of traditional long grass skirts.
Lockhart River's 'Art Gang' artists work through the community's cultural centre. They presently have access to a print studio, dark room, computer facilities, to visiting artists-in-residence and to Cairns TAFE art programs. Their work addresses the community, culture, and environment of Lockhart River today. An example of this work in the exhibition is Many Generations by Rosella Namok, a white on white screen print of 1000 x 700 mm, silky-surfaced, sleekly hypnotic and luminous. Made up of concentric oblong ovals, this image celebrates the belief that generations of family form a series of protective circles around Namok's new young son, her nephew and niece. The upright ovals also reference the female principle and the fading larger circles at the edge represent fading contact with the older generations. The result is a skilled multi-layered use of