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Shaping The Landscape: Spirit Figures From Northern Australia
February 6–March 14, 2025
Opening Reception: February 6, 6pm–8pm
D’Lan Contemporary New York
25 East 73rd Street, New York, NY 10021
New York, New York, January 7, 2025 — D’Lan Contemporary is pleased to announce Shaping The Landscape: Spirit Figures From Northern Australia, an exhibition of Australian First Nations sculpture from a private New York collection, The Martin Rae Collection (a pseudonym for a private New York based collecting couple), that is one of the most significant and comprehensive of its kind outside of Australia. The exhibition of 31 figurative works will mark the first time the Collection has been shown in its entirety. Shaping The Landscape will open at the gallery’s East 73rd Street location in New York on Thursday, February 6, 2025 and remain on view through March 14, 2025.
Representing more than 50 years of discerning collecting, and featuring several works that have previously been exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the gallery exhibition will bring together the sculptural traditions of three major art regions of Northern Australia: the Tiwi Islands, western Arnhem Land, and north-east Arnhem Land.
First Nations people in Australia have carved and decorated three-dimensional wooden forms for tens of thousands of years, most often using ironwood. Created primarily for ceremonial purposes, these poles, ornaments, weapons, and ritual objects relate to the religious lives of their makers.
Carved representations of the human form were first observed in northeast Arnhem Land by missionaries in the early 20th century. Since then, motivated by their contact with balanda (outsiders), various First Nations cultural groups across Northern Australia have sculpted figurative forms to trade and sell. Many of these figures are visual manifestations of spirit beings. Some depict specific creation ancestors central to the respective origins of each cultural group. Others represent spirits of the deceased.
Born in New York, the collector met and married his Australian wife in the 1960s. The couple made their first purchase of a woomera (an Australian First Nations wooden spear-throwing device) on a family visit to Australia shortly after their marriage. He has said that, if it were not for that trip, which sparked a lifelong passion for Australian First Nations art and culture, his collection might never have existed. Further, he has said, “These sculptures are more than just art objects; they are vessels of cultural significance, carrying the stories and spirits of generations. It’s an honor to share them with the world.”
Highlights of the collection include Untitled (Female Ceremonial Figure), dating to the early to mid-1960s, by Tiwi artist Mick Aruni Illortamini (circa 1917–1973). The work toured Canada as part of the Art of Aboriginal Australia exhibition between 1974 and 1976, the first major international exhibition by the Aboriginal Arts Board following its formation in 1973.
Enraeld Djulabinyanna Munkara (circa 1895–1965) was a master Tiwi sculptor, ceremonial leader, and cultural custodian from Milikapiti on Melville Island. His work evolved from the Pukumani funeral tradition, in which poles and mourning figures were placed as grave markers to symbolize the journey to the afterlife in Tiwi belief. His carvings, which introduced Tiwi art to the mainstream and affirmed his legacy as one of the most celebrated Tiwi artists, continually resonate with collectors and institutions worldwide.
Don Hocking Pudjamali (circa 1920–1976) was a senior member of an extended family group referred to as the Mandimbula, based at Paru on the southern coast of Melville Island. There, artists worked independently and were able to express themselves and the feelings of their community, as seen in Pudjamali’s rare sculpture Untitled (Ceremonial Female Figure) (circa 1966).
Kitty Kantilla Kutuwulumi Purawarrumpatu (circa 1928–2003) was a celebrated Tiwi artist who moved to Paru (80kms northwest of Darwin) as a teenager where she observed the early period of figurative Tiwi carving from which some of the most revered of all Tiwi artists would emerge. Purawarrumpatu was renowned for combining traditional ceremonial forms with contemporary abstraction. The multitiered sculpture Purrukaparli, Bima and Taparra (circa 1980), features the three ancestral creator beings central to Tiwi life and death, the face of each distinguished by specific jilamara (designs) decipherable only to Tiwi people.
Muŋgurrawuy Yunupiŋu (circa 1907–1979) was a revered Yolŋu artist and ceremonial leader of the Gumatj clan in north-east Arnhem Land. A custodian of Yolŋu lore and knowledge, his art, which he used to convey key cultural and spiritual narratives, served as a vital link between ancestral stories and the present. Lanydjung, a 1959 work by Yunupiņu—one of two figures by the artist in this collection—depicts one of the Yirritja creator beings, Lanydjung. As Lanydjung and his brother, Banaitja, emerged from the sea, the foam and spray marked their bodies forming white lines in a honeycomb pattern. Both figures are adorned with elaborate body paint designs and ceremonial ornaments featuring lorikeet feathers.
The figurative sculptures of Northern Australia have long been an area of intense interest and collecting focus for Australian and international institutions and private collectors alike. D’Lan Contemporary is honored to present this important private collection in its entirety for the first time and to share these works, on behalf of the collector, with audiences at their gallery in New York.
ABOUT D’LAN CONTEMPORARY
D’Lan Contemporary was founded in Melbourne, Australia in 2016 by art advisor and gallerist, D’Lan Davidson, who was previously Head of Indigenous Art at Sotheby’s Australia and who has specialized in Australian First Nations art for more than twenty years.
Representing Australia’s most distinctive and dynamic art movement, D’Lan Contemporary presents regular exhibitions by leading First Nations artists at its galleries in Melbourne, Sydney and New York, alongside an international program of educational talks and events that celebrate and promote the rich art and culture of the country’s first peoples.
In addition to its international exhibition program, D’Lan Contemporary frequently sources exceptional works of art on behalf of museums, institutions, and noted private collections.
D’Lan Contemporary maintains strict ethical practices and is committed to generating positive industry change to create a sustainable marketplace for this important segment of Australian art and culture. The gallery contributes 30% of its net profits back to First Nations artists and their local communities.
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FOR MEDIA ENQUIRIES
For International Requests:
Max Kruger-Dull
Tel: +1-212-675-1800
Blue Medium, Inc.
[email protected]
For Australian Requests:
Nicole Kenning
Tel: +44 7739 519 290
D’Lan Contemporary
[email protected]
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