6 Minutes @ Solenne Ducos-Lamotte

 Solenne Ducos-Lamotte, a French specialist of Australian Indigenous Art and the director and founder of IDAIA -  International Development for Australian Indigenous Art in Sydney, Australia. Solenne talks to mylifestylenews during her recent visit in Hong Kong to showcase the world's oldest artistic tradition "Water" themed paintings reveal the cultural legacy of Australian Aboriginals.

 

IDAIA - International Development for Australian Indigenous Art was founded in 2008, it has been dedicated to increase the presence and appreciation of quality and ethical Australian indigenous art amongst international audiences and facilitating numerous exhibition and acquisition projects.

 

This is done through educating, curating, sourcing and facilitating numerous exhibition and acquisition projects. I was previously Head of the Aboriginal art department at Michael Reid, a Caruana & Reid Fine Art in Sydney involved in the Australian Indigenous Art Commission at the musée du quai Branly in Paris in 2006.

 

I Studied in a prestigious art school Ecole National Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and Sydney‟s College of Fine Arts before I joined Michael Reid's Caruana & Reid Fine Art in Sydney as Head of the Aboriginal Art department.

 

I did a close collaboration with Wally Caruana, one of the most prominent Aboriginal art experts who was the first senior curator of Australian Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra for over twenty years. Responsible for the exhibition and education programs, such as the annual landmark exhibition "Important Aboriginal Art".

 

I also worked closely with the Aboriginal art centres and stakeholders, and acquired a thorough understanding of the many aspects at stake for Aboriginal art both as a unique living artistic tradition and as a market.

 

Beside working with major international art galleries and institutions to enrich Aboriginal Art in both private and institutional art collections worldwide. I lecture, write and curate for numerous organisations in Australia and across the globe regularly. 

 

 

This art tradition, promoting over 60,000 years of cultural wisdom, is currently a major focus in the international art scene, being favoured by global enthusiasts and garnering critical recognition.

 

IDAIA promotes Aboriginal art around the world, The ‘Watermark - The signature of life’ consists of 30 pieces of ‘water’ themed paintings, complete with warm colours and symbolic compositions surging vitality of Aboriginal art.

Aboriginal art is the oldest historical art tradition, with around 60,000 years of development and evolution. Due to recent trends, it is currently enjoying favour amongst critics, marking these current works by modern acrylic masters as milestones in the art form’s development. Stéphane Martin, Chairman of le musée du quai Branly, Paris, noted that is it currently “one of the most important art movements of recent times”.

Aboriginals use unique pictures and symbols to illustrate their own mythology and Dreamtime stories, all of which relate to the travels and journeys of their mythical ancestors who are said to have created the entire universe: land, fauna, flora, spirits and humankind.

Their paintings contain overwhelming spiritual, political, social and educational meaning, and reveal the painters’ deep sentiments toward the heritage of their homeland, the Australian desert.

The long history of Aboriginal art has bred various types of painting traditions. In ancient times, it was comprised of sand paintings and ochre painting on tree barks, rock cliffs and cave walls, evolving to the modern day acrylic paintings on canvasses, watercolour paintings, photography and more.

 

Acrylic paintings are the contemporary projections of the more traditional ground paintings and body paintings from older times. The modern masters adopted acrylic painting only recently, allowing their dream-inspired creations to become permanent, transmittable and easily sharable.

These 30 pieces of art are all related to water, the ultimate symbol of vitality that plays a crucial role in desert life. The desert area is an essential part of Aboriginal art development and thus water is a critical representative of it.

You can see many of these paintings are inevitably connected with water, some of them show the rich diversity of water’s various patterns, illustrated here as specific sites or simply as having a symbolic presence.

In addition to its historical value, the art value of Aboriginal art is recognised everywhere by the Australian Government, art communities and world-famous museums.

There is an annual value growth of around 40-50%, sustained through 1998-2008, as well as an auction turnover record that grew dramatically, boosting from AU$778,750 (Rover Thomas) in 2001 to AU$2,400,000 (Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri) in 2007.

 

Watermark also illustrates the new cultural links and achievements between China and Australia and gained much visibility over the past two years in Asia, thanks to the Year of Australian Culture, celebrated in China in 2011. On this occasion, a few institutional Aboriginal art exhibitions had toured in China in cities like Shanghai, Nanjing, Beijing and Xi'An.

The Year of Australian Culture also permitted the launch of the Aboriginal art exhibition ‘Aboriginal Art from Australia’s Deserts’ at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing.

 

 There are no specific rules in Aboriginals' painting. It is all come naturally, it depends on what they see from the mother nature, the energy, the power of the ancestor, the Flora & Fauna, the rock, the food that inspired them from their daily and traditional living lifestyle by creating the most natural line of colors.

mylifestylenews @ Solenne Ducos-Lamotte