2015 Members' exhibition
Milestone is the theme for this year's 2015 Members' show, in honour of NCCA's milestone 25th year in 2015/16. NCCA first opened its doors as 24HR Art on April Fool's Day, 1990. Perhaps it seemed like a foolhardy venture back then but the gallery has gone on to prove its mettle through a diverse contemporary art program over the past few decades which has challenged and inspired audiences and represented thousands of artists and curators from Darwin, the NT, and beyond.
Exhibiting member-artists (and a collector) were encouraged to take up the milestone theme to commemorate NCCA's 25th year, or respond more broadly to the idea of milestone and what it might represent on a more personal or sociopolitical level.
Milestone judges Margie and Franck both have affiliations with the gallery stemming from its formative years; Margie was part of NCCA's founding board while Franck exhibited in the gallery's first exhibition even before it had a 'permanent' venue.
Special thanks to all who participated and supported our Milestone Members' Show - Celebrating 25 years of NCCA's enduring presence and commitment to providing a quality contemporary arts program in Darwin.
Congratulations to the following artists:
ANDREW EWING: who was the overall winner of Milestone and has won a trip to Brisbane to see APT8; courtesy of Brian Tucker Accounting & NCCA.
GAYE COYNE: 1st Honorable Mention with a $500 voucher courtesy Cope Sensitive Freight.
SARAH PIRRIE: 2nd Honorable Mention with a hamper courtesy Parap Fine Foods
Judges also commended the work of BILL DAVIES and WINSOME JOBLING.
NCCA awarded 2 prizes:
The BoxOpp Award went to JAN CARTER who will have the opportunity to show in the Boxset in 2016.
TEROMAH STUMPAGEE was awarded NCCA's inaugural Emerging Photographer Award sponsored by Baz Ledwidge.
NCCA thanks both judges for their involvement and expertise. We are also grateful to our prize sponsors:
Brian Tucker Accounting
COPE Sensitive Freight
Parap Fine Foods
Baz Ledwidge
Images of MILESTONE Members' Show 2015-related work by (top-bottom-left-right) Bill Davies, Andy Ewing, Winsome Jobling, Jan Carter, Gay Coyne, Sarah Pirrie, Teroma Stumpagee.
Collage & acrylic on paper.
Merran Sierakowski
Something is growing in the Boxset: feral, spiral, fungal … 'tis the season.
I Virii imagines growth as both voluptuous and viral, realised through the artist’s characteristic crochet of (often) tough, tensile materials.
Merran Sierakowski is a Darwin-based artist who has worked across a variety of media (mainly print, sculpture, installation) over the past two decades, and who generally deals with current issues of environmental and humanitarian concern. She exhibits regularly in solo and group shows in Darwin, nationally and overseas and, among other achievements, has been a serial finalist in the former annual Togart Contemporary Art Award exhibition (2006-13). Her most recent solo exhibition, Not Waving … Drowning (an eco-marine-themed soft sculptural installation), showed at Nomad Art, Darwin, in May 2015.
Aaron Burton
33 is a dual screen installation which draws on Burton’s My Mother’s Village project which premiered at the 2012 Colombo Art Biennale. My Mother’s Village is, as the artist states, ‘a journey of inheritance’. It focuses attention on Sri Lankan communities where Burton’s parents conducted field research in the late 1970s and produced The Sri Lanka Series (1980), comprising three ethnographic documentaries. 33 years later, Burton visits the same villages/communities and the same participants from The Sri Lanka Series. His filmic treatment (gathered over 4 years [2010-14] as part of his doctoral research) pursues the original themes and issues of the former: economic conditions, colonialism, the roles and position of women, religion and ritual, and intergenerational change. The 33 installation includes excerpts from The Sri Lanka Series juxtaposed against Burton’s recent footage.
Image: '33', installation view (detail), NCCA, 2015; image courtesy the artist
Aaron Burton is a documentary filmmaker, photographer, and visual artist. His personal storytelling approach to moving and still images traverses the boundaries of documentary, visual ethnography, and video art. In 2009 Burton was awarded the inaugural Jeremy Hynes Award by the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, for his video-based documentaries. Aaron holds a PhD in Media Arts from the University of New South Wales and is currently lecturing at Charles Darwin University, NT.
www.aaronlburton.com
'The Sri Lanka Series', 1980, by Sharon Bell and Geoff Burton
Rita Macarounas
‘Entelechia’ is a Latin word originating from the Greek term ‘entelekheia’ which relates to Aristotle’s philosophy describing ‘the condition of a thing whose essence is fully realised’. ‘Actuality’ as distinct from ‘potentiality’. For artist Rita Macarounas, it’s a term which denotes her Greek heritage and is akin to the idea of ‘being the best that we can be’. In this regard, Macarounas turns to the sunflower as a symbol of this state of being fully realised and of the cycle of life. ‘There’s a lot of doom and gloom around so I wanted something really intense to tell a story’, Macarounas says of this work which incorporates a gold leaf background in accordance with the philosophy and sunflower motif as well as harking back to previous training in the Greek Orthodox icon tradition. This work, showing in NCCA's Boxset over the Christmas/New Year break, belongs to an ongoing series of ‘Entelechia’ works, and marks the artist’s debut showing at NCCA.
Born in Darwin, Rita Macarounas studied visual arts at Campus Arts & Sciences, Athens, with Effie Halivoupoulou, and printmaking at Charles Darwin University with Mats Undén. Her art background also involves pottery and Byzantine iconography. She has been working as an artist since 1986, first showing work in the 29th Pan Hellenic Pottery Exhibition, Athens, 1987. Macarounas returned to Darwin four years ago after a long period living in Greece, and is actively involved in the local arts and Hellenic community. Primarily a painter, Macarounas is particularly drawn to the colour red and all its hues (‘symbolising life, passion, fear, danger, wealth, speed, and attraction’). Gold is also an important component in her work and identifies her Greek Orthodox spiritual heritage. She is currently working on a project based on the Hellenic Diaspora which will be exhibited at Darwin Visual Arts Association in May 2016. Macarounas’s work can be found in private collections in Greece, Holland, Belgium and Australia.
Chayni Henry
George Town (Gallery 2) is a kind of love letter to the vernacular architecture of this UNESCO heritage-listed city, the capital of the Malaysian island of Penang – ‘oozing’, in the artist’s words, ‘with the kind of tropical colonial stuff I love’. The exhibition furthers Darwin-based artist Chayni Henry’s interest in local built heritage, as seen with her most recent solo exhibition, Foundation – new paintings by Chayni Henry, at Outstation Gallery, Darwin (2013). George Town reflects the artist’s desire to ‘start a relationship with the architecture of SE Asia’, with the work continuing her distinctive painted cut-out, narrative forms, and drawing on a research visit to Penang earlier this year.
Chayni Henry is one of Darwin/the NT’s leading contemporary artists with a practice (since 2002) largely involving painting and printmaking. In 2012, she re-launched Red Hand Prints with fellow Darwin artist Franck Gohier. She was the overall winner of the inaugural Togart Award (2007), and was represented in the annual Primavera exhibition (Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney) in 2006. Chayni has previously held 10 solo exhibitions (in Darwin, Sydney, and Hobart), and participated in numerous group exhibitions. Her work is held in many notable public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, Corrigan Collection, Laverty Collection, Artbank, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. www.redhandprints.com
Chayni's research trip to Penang was assisted by the NT Government through Arts NT.
Claudine Marzik, Tijn Meulendijks
Seed to Seed (Gallery 1) is a collaboration by Cairns-based artists Tijn Meulendijks and Claudine Marzik which has involved them in a series of exhibitions over the past 4 years cultivating a shared interest in the natural environment and abstraction, expressed through their different mediums: primarily painting (Claudine), and ephemeral plant-based installations (Tijn). ‘Although growing up in Switzerland and the Netherlands’, the artists write, ‘we both have been living in Australia for many years and we have an extensive knowledge of plant and plant material from Australia. In Seed to Seed, we engage with the cycle of vegetation observing the rules; we aim to capture its movement and rhythm, and to give form and shape using a similar perception. Although we are using different mediums, our views have similar aesthetic values.’
Seed to Seed comprises 2- and 3-dimensional works which respond to, and reinterpret Australia’s tropical far north including a site-specific installation of Darwin plant life.
Image: 'Seed to Seed', installation view (detail), NCCA, 2015; image courtesy the artists
Claudine Marzik is a self-taught artist, primarily painter, who is influenced by mid-20th century Abstraction and Minimalism. Born in Basel, Switzerland, she migrated to Australia in 1988 and is based in Cairns. She has held around 16 solo or duo exhibitions in various cities around Australia and internationally (Japan, Switzerland), and including venues such as Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Townsville, and Kick Arts Contemporary Arts, Cairns. Claudine won the Painting Prize in the 2013 Waterhouse Natural Science Art Award (SA Museum, Adelaide), and the Primary Award in the 2012 Redlands Art Awards, Queensland. www.claudinemarzik.com
Tijn Meulendijks works with nature, and with vegetation in particular. He holds a Master of Floral Design from Hertogenbosh, The Netherlands (2004) and his lifelong interest in botany and the human perception of nature has become the greatest influence in a practice largely involving site-specific installation and works on paper. Tijn has exhibited his work throughout Queensland, and in The Netherlands, and including for key ephemeral sculpture-based events such as Floating Land, Noosa Regional Gallery, and Strand ephemera, Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Townsville. He is a past winner (2009, with Claudine Marzik) of the Port Douglas Sculpture Award. www.tijnmeulendijks.com
Ni Nyoman Sani, Suryani
In June/July 2015 NCCA ran its second Artists' Camp in the Top End for 6 Indonesian artists from Bali. For the first time the Camp travelled to the Centre and also included two women artists, Ni Nyoman Sani and Suryani. desert trail (Gallery 2) is a small selection of their work focusing on their time in and around Alice Springs including a visit to Uluru. The exhibition is a prelude to the main Artists' Camp 2015 exhibition to be held in Darwin towards the end of the year, and to also include the work of Made Budhiana, Wayan Wirawan, Made Sudibia, Made Suarimbawa (Dalbo), Rupert Betheras and Lionel Possum.
Ni Nyoman Sani is one of Bali's leading contemporary artists renowned for her depictions of the female form. She has been an active member of Bali's Seniwati Gallery for women artists, and also advocates for the nexus of spirituality, art and healing. She is a graduate of the STSI Art University, Bali, and her work the subject of the 2006 publication The paintings of Ni Nyoman Sani by I Wayan Sukra and Vidyasuri Utami. Sani was represented in the group exhibition Bali: Return Economy at Fremantle Arts Centre, 2014. Her practice combines painting, sound/music/performance, installation, photography/film and fashion design.
Nanik Suryani is an emerging artist originally from East Java who has been based in Bali over the past decade. She is primarily a painter with an interest in the Consensusism style characterised by the work of Dutch artist Ton Schulten and an emphasis on abstract geometric composition in balance with the roots of impressionism and the elements of shape, light and color. 'Although my parents sent me to University to study foreign literature and languages, it turned out that I am an artist', writes Suryani, who has held several solo exhibitions in Bali since 2013.
The Artists’ Camp is sponsored by the NT Government, Commonwealth Bank Indonesia, and the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade (Australia Indonesia Institute).
Michael Galovic
‘… this is the contemporary challenge of seeing through moments of clarity while holding with frail hope the complex experience of being human …’
Of Beauty and Sadness brings together three strands of practice from NSW-based painter Michael Galovic. The first strand represents Galovic’s practice as an icon painter in the Christian tradition. This is the discipline that he is best known for and for which he has dedicated much of his practice since graduating from the Belgrade Academy of Arts, Yugoslavia, in 1974. As an icon painter Galovic is particularly interested in the Crucifixion and Stabat Mater (lit. ‘the Mother was standing’ [Latin], referring to the Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Cross).
Galovic’s second strand of practice is what he calls his ‘contemporary religious’ works. These paintings are strongly informed by the icon tradition but without adhering to all of its strict visual codes, allowing the artist to explore themes such as the Crucifixion more freely and to draw on wider influences including Paul Gauguin’s ‘The Yellow Christ’.
Galovic’s third strand of practice is his ‘contemporary non-religious works’ which embrace a range of mythological subjects and which arguably include his depicitions of Uluru in Central Australia, a subject which he began exploring around 16 years ago. Galovic's Uluru-related works form a major component of this exhibition. They reveal the way in which his different strands may converge given Uluru's sacred significance and his response to this, in some of the works, through the icon tradition.
After extensive travels around the world, Galovic settled in Australia in 1990. His work as an icon painter appears in hundreds of churches and religious institutions throughout Australia and overseas. He has held solo exhibitions around the country and the world, and he is a four-time finalist in the annual Blake Prize for Religious Art. Of Beauty and Sadness is his first exhibition in Darwin.
Above quote from Dr Rod Pattenden, ‘Dark Light: The Art of Michael Galovic’, in The Son of Man: Traditional icons and contemporary religious artwork by Michael Galovic’, 2014, p. 4.
www.michaelgalovic.com
Aly de Groot
Overfishing, combined with oceanic warming, is creating perfect living and breeding conditions for jellyfish across the planet. Various species are now found in places they never used to be, often in plague proportions. For example, box jellyfish are now found as far south as Coffs Harbor and Japan has a giant pink jellyfish problem that is destroying their fishing industry. Made from Japanese World War 2 helmets, and fishingline, The Jellyfish Wars (showing in NCCA's Screenroom) conveys the narrative of this surreptitious invasion. The helmets are covered in ghost nets, which are another intercontinental marine menace, and a big problem in Northern Australia. The installation is accompanied by Ghost Story: The Art of Aly de Groot - an evocative and haunting documentary directed by Timothy Parish and Shannon Swan as part of Art X North, a collaboration between ABC Arts Online and Screen Territory.
Aly De Groot’s creative agenda involves a thorough investigation into the use of marine detritus combined with basket making techniques, resulting in ethereal woven sculpture and installations that extend the conversation about the fragile marine eco-system and the importance of celebrating and protecting it. She is increasingly recognised as one of Australia’s leading contemporary fibre artists, winning the prestigious Toga Art Award in 2013. Her first major public sculpture was commissioned by the City of Darwin in 2014, and stands proudly seaside in the East Point Nature Reserve. As a recipient of a Charles Darwin University Post Graduate Research Scholarship, her PhD research (Underwater Basket Weaving) explores issues surrounding basketry and ecology.
www.alydegroot.com.au
Alison Dowell
Showing in NCCA's Boxset Tin Lids is an assemblage of embossed tea canister lids which were given to the artist by a friend, and painted with indigo blue oil paint. The tin lids come from London as does the artist whose grandparents were Cockneys from the poorer East End of London. Products such as tea and indigo were once imported by boat from the far East into the East India Docks, now 'Docklands' area of London. ‘Tin Lids’ is also Cockney slang for ‘kids’ and so this work encapsulates both Dowell’s London childhood and heritage as well as her philosophy of recycling and repurposing objects for her art.
‘They [the lids] are all the same’, writes Dowell, ‘but each one is different, like my pop William Eedle who had 6 siblings, and my nan Emily Cox who was the oldest of 11 siblings’. Dowell relates the repetitious patterning of numbers and letters on the lids to the work of Yayoi Kusama, with the late Rosalie Gascoigne also a conscious influence in her use of resonant found objects.
Alison Dowell is a Darwin-based artist and art teacher who has extensive experience in community-based arts. She works in a range of mediums and has exhibited in a range of gallery and public art/event settings. She was the overall winner of the annual Rights On Show Award in 2013, and of the Pine Creek Art Acquisition Prize in 2015.
Barayuwa Munungurr, Ruark Lewis, Bengitj Ngurruwuthun, Jeffrey Ngurruwuthun
Opening Thursday 6 August, 3pm
Gallery 1 + Gallery 2 + Screenroom + Boxset
Rambangi / Together as equals explores the cultural poetics and politics of the homeland movement through a collaborative installation-based project involving 3 custodians of the Yarrinya site (a saltwater estate in Blue Mud Bay, north-east Arnhem Land) and a Sydney-based artist. The project stems from a history of collaboration since 2009 between Yirrkala-based artist Barayuwa Munungurr and Sydney-based artist Ruark Lewis, along with the involvement of Bengitj Ngurruwuthun and Jeffrey Ngurruwuthun. One of the key ancestral stories embedded at this site involves the ritual carving-up of the flesh and body of an ancestral whale, Mirinyungu, by Munyuku spirit men (Wurramala or Matjitji) who are brothers of Mirinyungu. The story holds significant and sacred ceremonial knowledge for Munyuku people and is manifest through myriad features of the Yarrinya coast.
All 4 artists will converge in Darwin for the realisation of an exhibition involving a wall-based installation, a traditional bark shelter, film, photography, bark painting, sculpture, and performance. The exhibition will take up NCCArt’s entire gallery spaces (Gallery 1, Gallery 2, Boxset and Screenroom) and is presented in association with Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala, and as part of the 2015 Darwin Festival program.
Barayuwa Munungurr (b. 1980; also known as Djirkurrul, Gulukurru) is an early-career artist based at Yirrkala. Barayuwa largely paints the designs of his mother Bengitj’s homeland, Yarrinya (through Munyuku clan ties), which is also the motherland of his grandfather, Wonggu Munungurr, one of Donald Thomson’s key informants in the mid-1930s. As well as painting, Barayuwa makes spears, spear-throwers, clapsticks and yidakis. He is also a talented yidaki player. After showing in Buku-Larrnggay’s Young Guns II exhibition at Annandale Galleries, Sydney in 2008, Barayuwa held his first solo exhibition at Indigenart, The Mossenson Galleries, Perth in 2009. Barayuwa was represented in the MCA’s Primavera exhibition in 2014.
Bengitj Ngurruwuthun (b. 1954) is an artist, educator and linguist. She is the mother of Barayuwa, and sister of Dula and Gambali Ngurruwuthun, the great ritual specialists of the region during the 1970s through to the turn of last century. As an artist, Bengitj makes paintings and sculptures (including larrakitj/hollow log coffins) which usually relate to Yarrinya. Bengitj has played a central role in Barayuwa’s ongoing collaboration with Ruark, as a senior cultural adviser and in providing English translations of the Yolngu concepts and subjects underpinning Barayuwa’s art.
Jeffrey Ngurruwuthun (b. 1978) is Barayuwa’s cousin, and fellow custodian of Yarrinya and surrounding Munyuku clan country through his role as a songman. Jeffrey has performed with Barayuwa and Bengitj at several exhibition openings including for the 2014 Primavera exhibition at the MCA, Sydney and previously in Sydney at the Australian Museum, Cross Art Projects and Macquarie University Gallery.
Ruark Lewis (b. 1960) is a Sydney-based visual artist and writer. He works in a wide range of media such as painting, drawing, installation, artists-books, performance, public art, theatre and audio-video works. A graduate of the Sydney College of Arts, Lewis’s first professional position was Curator of poetry readings at the Art Gallery of NSW between 1984 and 1988; his first solo exhibitions (in Sydney) were transcriptions of sound and music, titled Transcription Drawings. Collaboration has played a central role in Lewis’s multidisciplinary practice, and has seen him work with Paul Carter, Rik Rue, Amanda Stewart, and Jonathan Jones (among others) who first introduced Lewis to Barayuwa in 2009. Lewis was the subject of a two-part survey exhibition at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre and Macquarie University Gallery in 2012/13, which forms the basis of his forthcoming monograph Thoughtlines.
Dress Me Featherless
Gallery 2 + Screenroom + Boxset
Curator: Fiona Gavino
Artists: Shinya Akutagawa, Lyra Garcellano, Mark Salvatus, Mark Valenzuela,
The Philippines is a place of rich ethnicities where the people have tenaciously struggled for some 380 years against colonial tyranny and neocolonial occupation. Dress Me Featherless addresses this diversity and history in the contemporary ‘postcolonial’ present through new work by 4 early-career artists who are either from the Philippines or who have ongoing ties with the country. Through sculpture, film, and installation, the artists seek to challenge status quos and stereotypes concerning identity – national and individual. Curated by Fremantle (WA)-based Fiona Gavino as an outcome of her 2014 Asialink residency in Manila.
Shinya Akutagwa (Japan, Bangkok) is a conceptual artist who works with mixed media, installation, video and sound. He has studied painting, video and film, often using computer programming to combine interactive and architectural ideas to convey his concepts. akutagawashinya.com
Lyra Garcellano (Philippines) primarily works with installation and painting. Her works revolve around the politics of identity and are anchored in issues of displacement, movement, history and memory. lyragarcellano.com
Mark Salvatus (Philippines) works with familiar objects, chance encounters and everyday politics in a practice that involves various media from drawing, installation, photography, video, and street art to interactive and participatory projects. marksalvatus.blogspot.com.au
Mark Valenzuela (Philippines/Australia) has a practice which combines painting, drawing and ceramic installation. Internal and external conflict, anxiety and repetition are residing themes that Valenzuela explores to reveal the ways that an individual adjusts, conforms and rebels against his/herself and the society in which they live.
Fiona Gavino is an artist and curator currently based in Fremantle, WA (since 2008), after 12 years living in the NT where her cross-cultural weaving-based practice developed, and from where she curated two touring exhibitions largely comprising weaving/textile-based work: Call and Response (2006-07), and Organic Matters (2001). She recently curated the Perth International Arts Festival exhibition Yirrkala: works on paper, barks, sculpture at the Uni of WA’s Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery. Gavino’s practice encompasses sculpture, film, and installation. Her work is featured in Hot Springs, the Northern Territory & Contemporary Australian Artists (2012).
Luke Pither
Gallery 1
Starts and Finishes (Paintings for Spiders) is a new body of work exploring through painting processes the important role and relationships of spiders in the natural world. The project examines the physical nature of spider vision and explores ways to translate this visually into paintings and painted objects. Scientists have widely recognised and celebrated the dexterity of spider vision, however little for visual output exists that demonstrates the viewpoint of the spider. The intention of this project is to produce works that represent the capability of spider vision and movement while considering an insect’s point of view in the world we occupy. This project belongs to a decade of investigation into the relationship between painting and the natural world, focused primarily on garden processes.
Luke Pither (b. 1975) trained in painting and printmaking at RMIT, Melbourne in 1994 before deferring to concentrate on a self-directed practice that combines the study of movement, colour physics and gardening in projects traversing multiple visual platforms. Between 1997 and 2010 he worked extensively in set design, dramaturgy and choreographic projects in Europe and Australia. Since 2002 he has designed permaculture and organic gardens in Australia as well as working collaboratively with permaculture design consultancy Very Edible Gardens, Melbourne. Pither has held solo exhibitions in Melbourne, Sydney, Germany (Berlin and Adlershof) and Antwerp (Netherlands), and his work is held in numerous public and private collections in Australia and overseas.
Leanne Waterhouse
Hang Me Out To Dry belongs to Leanne Waterhouse's Cumulus series, born out of her decade spent living in Darwin/the Top End, an experience which she has been able to reflect on more objectively after moving to Melbourne in 2014 to undertake postgraduate studies at the Victoria College of Arts. Waterhouse writes: ‘I have spent the past year experimenting with a wide range of materials that for me represent my time living in the Northern Territory. I am particularly interested in making work that represents how I have felt over the past 10 years during the build-up periods and wet season. I have in interest in developing further research into the individual responses to living in remote locations that experience extremes in weather.’ Waterhouse will exhibit work from the Cumulus series in the NCCArt Boxset.
Leanne Waterhouse is a Bachelor of Arts (Visual) graduate from Charles Sturt University, NSW (1997) and a Graduate Certificate (Visual Arts) graduate from Victoria College of Arts, Melbourne (2014). She has held solo exhibitions in Darwin and Sydney since 2007, and has curated exhibitions including She’s a Pearler: DVAA Retrospective (2013/14), commemorating the 30th anniversary of Darwin Visual Arts Association where she was Manager 2011-14.
Baz Ledwidge
Darwin-based photographer Baz Ledwidge has been chronicling life in the Top End for over 40 years. He moved to Darwin in 1974 not long before Cyclone Tracy and was one of the first to photograph the city in the wake of the cyclone’s aftermath. His camera has documented events both epic and small along with the famous and the infamous characters that made and continue to make the city and region move to its own unique beat. Indeed Ledwidge has not been a detached observer in this overall process. Darwin Daze includes images of his own unique social and larrikin-esque affiliations (such as the Darwin Rocksitters’ Club). The exhibition comprises a selection of around 35 photographic prints in Gallery 2 along the themes of ‘Characters’ and ‘Lifestyle’, and a larger selection of images projected in the Screen Room.
Baz Ledwidge’s photographic career began with a cadetship at age 17 working for the Wagga Daily Advertiser in his hometown Wagga Wagga, New South Wales. There he was thrown into the thick of it, ‘sent from football matches to murders, car accidents to street parades’. After a variety of jobs in London and Papua New Guinea, Ledwidge picked up photography again when he settled in Darwin, initially employed by the federal AIS (Australian Information Service) and later as the photographer at the Northern Territory University (now Charles Darwin University), a position he held for 22 years. Ledwidge was one of the co-founders of Darwin’s independent Star newspaper. He continues to work in Darwin as a freelance photographer.
www.four22images.com
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