Deutscher and Hackett

Crafting his own unique representations of country, the paintings of Paddy Bedford evoke rocky escarpments, rivers and other amorphous features of the Kimberley landscape, whilst at the same time containing a learned and poetical knowledge of the land and its creation stories. His formal language is characterised by a symbiotic relationship between bold forms and an elegant, balanced composition. While Bedford’s early paintings engaged the use of natural ochres to depict his environment, his later works employed a more restrained and pared-back palette, initially using only black and white, but later incorporating yellow, grey and pink washes, applied to the canvas before the previously administered layer of paint had dried, a process known as ‘wet on wet’.

Known as Goowoomji-Nyunkuny in his Gija language, Paddy Bedford is recognized as one of the most important Indigenous Australian artists. Painting his first works on discarded building materials in 1998, aged 75, he soon became noticed as an innovator and influential artist through his unique depictions of East Kimberley indigenous history which evolve the artistic tradition forged earlier by Rover Thomas and Paddy Jaminji. Born and raised on Bedford Station where he worked for rations as a stockman, Bedford also spent time on Greenvale and Bow River Stations before returning to his place of birth. As with most Aboriginal people in the eastern Kimberley, Bedford continued traditional practices and ceremony which provided the opportunities for him to paint. His first paintings in the public domain were made when he joined the Jirrawun group of artists established by Freddie Timms at Rugun (Crocodile Hole) in 1997, becoming one of the senior artists of the group. 

Dingo Dreaming, 2001 relates to an episode from the dreaming or Ngarranggarni in Gija language that took place at the site of Garndiwarl, located to the south-west of Bedford Downs on a part of what is now Lansdown Station – the birthplace of the artist’s mother and one of the dreaming sites of the ancestral dingo marranyi who travelled though this country when he was a man in the ancient times before being turned into a rock at the site of Gernawarliyan, (also known as Camel Gap). Notably, the name of this place is taken from a type of tree used to make spear throwers or woomeras known as the bats-wing coral tree or Garndiwarl (Erythrina verspertillo).

Bedford painted with a deep sense of cultural responsibility. Throughout much of his professional practice this respected senior Gija artist and lawman painted stories from the countries of his mother, father, and uncle. He was major custodian of three significant sites – Emu Dreaming, Bush Turkey Dreaming and Cockatoo Dreaming – and his idiosyncratic depictions of these bestows a visual re-presentation of Indigenous cultural memory that contributes to a growing body of work promoting the decolonisation of Australian history. 

CRISPIN GUTTERIDGE