Arthur (Jalyirri) Dixon, Untitled (AD23009), 2023. Acrylic on canvas, 79 x 74.6cm. Courtesy: the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne.

Niagara Galleries presents Arthur (Jalyirri) Dixon‘s debut solo exhibition.

The Mudburra artist grew up in the remote Northern Territory community of Marlinja, near Elliott, around 700 km from both Alice Springs and Darwin. He grew up in a creative family, using music for storytelling and a vehicle for keeping Mudburra, one of the world’s oldest languages, alive. Both his father Ray Dimakarri Dixon and sister Eleanor Dixon are accomplished singer/songwriters.

Dixon employs gestural mark-making in variously scaled, evocative abstract paintings. Generally painted off-stretcher, his work features both subtle tonal shifts and contrasting pigments, as well as textural elements from leaving areas of canvas raw.

Dixon uses the Mudburra word ‘ngurramarla’ to describe his work, a term which refers to ancestral connection and the channelling of creativity through this connection. It is a term which reflects the heightened state of Dixon’s expressive act of painting and, in turn, his underlying inspiration to connect with and care for Country. The artist’s paintings are mostly untitled and highly intuitive rather than literal in their expression of ngurramarla. The first three paintings of Dixon’s to be publicly exhibited, as part of the 2023 Desert Mob exhibition in Alice Springs, were given the title Ngurramarlawas, an indication of the artist’s emerging status and remarkable freedom and confidence as a painter.

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