Image Credit: Brett Nannup, Self-Portrait, 2012, Courtesy Cicada Press
The Kluge-Ruhe Collection has partnered with Cicada Press at the University of New South Wales in Sydney to showcase the recent prints of a group of Australian Aboriginal artists.
Since 2006 Michael Kempson, director of Cicada Press, and Tess Allas, curator of Black Prints, have invited emerging and established Aboriginal artists to explore printmaking as an artistic practice in the form of workshops and residencies. The resulting exhibition includes work by artists such as Gordon Hookey, Vernon Ah Kee, Reko Rennie and Laurel Nannup.
The title Black Prints is a word play on the Australian child’s summer obsession of collecting cicada carcasses. While ‘greengrocers’ are the most common species, many of them can be traded for just one of the rarely found, but highly prized ‘black prince’ cicada. Fittingly, summer 2013 marks the emergence of 17-year cicadas in Virginia.
The opening reception to celebrate Black Prints from Cicada Press, along with the re-opening of the museum’s permanent exhibition Past Forward >> Contemporary Aboriginal Art, is on Friday, May 31 from 5:30-7:30pm.