SOLD
Provenance
Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide
Private collection, Brisbane
Ian Abdulla spent 10 years on the Gerard Aboriginal Mission near Winkie, and his painted memories frequently draw from this time and place. "The first time we had a TV on Gerard Mission we would watch the TV in the hall to see the movies until the TV would close" (2002) captures the artist's earliest encounter with televisual technology. With Abdulla's signature naive style and wondrous attention to detail, he strips away extraneous visual information to include only those signs that give shape to his memory. Here the exterior wall of the hall has been rendered invisible, revealing the attentive viewers seated before the cumbersome monitor.
Often memories are like dreams, and this delightful painting has precisely this kind of wonderful strangeness. The two yellow humps in the centre of the image resemble mountainous terrain, but are actually the illuminations cast from the light fixtures within the hall. Outside, a third lamp casts a lopsided glow of yellow from behind the building, and the stars dot the sky at even intervals, like patterned wallpaper. Rendered in acrylic on linen, Abdulla uses a striking combination of yellow and black to depict the magical nighttime scene. By pairing the images with descriptive text, Abdulla invites his viewer further into the world of the image, wanting his story to be seen, heard and remembered for posterity.