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Rosella Namok UK Debut Show at The October Gallery

20 August 2004 - The October Gallery Media Release - Rosella Namok is the most widely-acclaimed and best known of an emerging group of young Aboriginal artists commonly referred to as the Lockhart River Art Gang.

This group of Aboriginal artists all belong to the Lockhart River Community on the east coast of the far northern tip of Queensland. In the last several years the refreshing and innovative work of these artists - all of them below the age of thirty-has collectively taken the Australian art world by storm, with the twenty-five year-old Rosella leading the charge into a large number of public and private collections both at home and abroad.

A member of the Aankum language group Rosella began to paint early whilst helping her father decorate the bodies of dancers at traditional ceremonies with ochre paints. These ancestral markings still form part of her repertory today, together with other traditional symbolic patterns passed down to Rosella through her grandmother.

Other works illuminate more contemporary concerns, exploring the difficult conditions under which Aboriginal people still labour today and making explicit reference to themes of violence, education, health, justice and the breakdown of traditional value systems in the often antagonistic modern world. Her paintings thus operate as an individual response to the problems of maintaining life and vigour within her native culture.

In 1999, Rosella was nominated as the Young Australian of the Year (Arts Section) and, in 2003, received the Australian Centenary Medal for "distinguished services to Indigenous art." Most recently she has received the prestigious High Court of Australia Centenary Art Prize.

Conscious of her rapidly developing reputation - which has led to a series of sell-out shows- and the consequent difficulty of obtaining work by Rosella that has not already been spoken for, the October Gallery is delighted to present the first-ever solo exhibition of this talented young Australian artist to audiences in the U.K.

For further press information please contact Sophie Dunsmure :- 020 7242 7367 24 Old Gloucester Street WC1N 3AL
press@octobergallery.co.uk

Source: The October Gallery

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