Visiting Artists to the Preston Singletary Studio
1st January 2017
In late December the Preston Singletary Studio was pleased to host visiting artists Djambawa Marawili and Gunybi Ganambarr, along with Kade McDonald (Director of Hanging Valley) from Australia. The artists collaborated on several unique glass pieces during their week-long visit.
Preston Singletary met Ganamburr in 2015 when Singletary visited Australia while taking part in a cultural exchange hosted by the United States Embassy. While touring the country they forged a connection and planned on having the Australian artists visit Seattle in the future.
Djambawa Marawili is known as a leader in of the Madarrpa Clan as well as a renowned artist. His art resides in several museum collections and he is recognized as an activist in his community. Marawili works in several mediums including “sculpture, bark painting and linocut, Marawili also produced the first screenprint image for the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Printspace”.
Gunybi Ganambarr is noted for his innovative work with found materials. The Australian wrote; "When Ganambarr was a young man, senior Yolngu artists recognized his ability and ensured he had the skills and knowledge to create the extraordinary bark paintings on show. These wonderfully complex and technically brilliant barks sit alongside new works that exploit the potential of materials found around mining sites. Using the layered webs of lines fundamental to traditional Yolngu painting and the incising of lines that characterizes Yolngu carving, he has reclaimed the insulation panels and rubber belts discarded by miners and transformed them into panels that combine traditional image-making with an enhanced sense of visual depth and tangible space. Ganambarr's work epitomizes the innovative and exploratory nature of contemporary Aboriginal arts practice.” Ganambarr ‘s work has also been exhibited at the Seattle Art Museum.
This recent meeting between all of the artists to the Preston Singletary Studio focused on exploring different mediums, learning the glassblowing and design process, and working on new pieces collaboratively, the first of which is titled "Warrukay".
