‘Red Earth, Blue Skies and Anangu Smiles’, Gemma Rose Brook
5 – 28 November 2021
Please join us at Floating Goose Studios Inc. for the opening of ‘Red Earth, Blue Skies and Anangu Smiles’, a solo exhibition by artist Gemma Rose Brook.
Opening Event: Friday 5th November 6pm – 9pm, with opening words by Cassie Thring.
Secure your place via the Eventbrite link: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/…/red-earth-blue-skies…
This show would not have been possible without the support of Ernabella Arts and the community members who encouraged me with big smiles to paint on specific parts of the land. I am thankful to my friends in the art centre for sharing cultural knowledge with me, welcoming me into their lives and trusting me with painting the land. I very much acknowledge that all my pictures in this show were painted on Anangu land and I deeply respect the ongoing connection between land, spirit and life. Gemma Rose Brook is an emerging artist who paints her environments from life as a way to document her experience. After completing art school in 2019 at Adelaide Central School of Art she received both the Carclew fellowship and artist in residence. As an emerging painter she has been included in multiple group shows all over South Australia, was selected as a finalist in the Heysen Prize and won Youthscape in 2020. Gemma also has an ongoing mentorship relationship with revered plein air painter Tom Carment. In the first half of this year Gemma packed up her van to move to Ernabella in the APY lands to work as the painting studio manager. Alongside assisting, sharing knowledge and learning from the artist’s in the art centre, Gemma also painted this experience. These painting from life tell a story of her time living and working in a remote indigenous community. Her energetic yet, humble paintings invite the viewer into a desert community world of mountains, government housing, camp dogs, large skies and red lands well away from the highway. These works are a diaristic journey of her experience living, painting and breathing in the lands. Each painting is informed through the experience of connecting and respecting the cultural vitality within the community, while also questioning her place as a painter with a western lens within this environment.
Image details: Gemma Rose Brook, ‘Red Earth, Blue Skies and Anangu Smiles’, 2021, Oil on board, 20 x 25. Photography: Rosina Possingham
This activity is supported by Adelaide Central School of Art.