Marianne Newman Gallery will celebrate NAIDOC Week and northern Sydney’s Guringai Festival by presenting Land and Sea Country: a selection of Indigenous works on paper.

Printmaking has only been practised by Indigenous artists for some thirty years but due to the similarities between the processes of incising designs in stone or the carving of wooden objects, and the engraving of wood and linoleum, it has been adopted as a natural extension to traditional Indigenous art practice. The execution of traditional bark painting is also similar to the overprinting of colours in screenprinting and similar effects of colour are achieved.   

Aboriginal culture is one of the oldest living cultures in the world and themes about the creation of the Aboriginals’ land, their spiritual beliefs and their law regarding moral and ethical behaviour are practised and passed on through the generations through art, song and dance. The art has over the last 35 years also become a political expression of land ownership and a means to inform westerners of the relevance of Aboriginal culture in contemporary life.