Two major artists, Michael Nelson Jagamara and Imants Tillers, were ‘re-united’ in 2001 at the Winn Street Studios in Fortitude Valley; in the month of July they completed their first collaborative work Nature Speaks Y / Confused Possum. Since then an additional twenty paintings have been completed, of which five will form the centrepiece of the FireWorks Gallery 2018 exhibition The Call from Papunya.
Originally, seven collaborative works were planned. Chapter One culminated in the momentous 2008 Fatherland. This was soon followed by Chapter Two, with an additional six works, closing in 2012 with The Loaded Ground (Drill Hall ANU Canberra exhibition and associated publication) featuring the momentous 165 canvasboard work Hymn to the Night. The latest chapter includes The Messenger, a 64-panel square format work, which featured in the exhibition Meeting Place at Parliament House Gallery, August-November 2017 (this work being subsequently acquired by APH Art Collection). Also, recently completed (and the focus of the 2018 QAGOMA Foundation Appeal) was Metafisica Australe, 72 canvasboards, which showcases Michael Nelson’s seminal 1984 work, Five Stories, repainted and reimagined in a collaborative format. Tillers’ multiple canvasboard panels which fit together to form large, gridded works is also utilised for his collaborations with Jagamara with canvasboards moving backwards and forwards between the artists’ studios in Papunya, Brisbane and Cooma. Opportunities for ongoing dialogue are expressed visually through private vernaculars of colour, shape, text and composition. (See below for collaboration exhibition history).
2001 | A Reunion in the Campfire Studios (1 work) | FWG Ann St Brisbane |
2002 | Lines (II) | FWG Stratton St Brisbane |
2002 | Not yet post-Aboriginal | Hazlehurst Regional Art Gallery |
2002 | Discomfort: Relationships within Aboriginal Art | FWG Stratton St Brisbane |
2005 | Shoosh! The History of the Campfire Group | IMA Brisbane |
2006 | Imants Tillers: One World Many Visions | NGA Canberra |
2008 | From the Studio: experiments and collaborations | FWG Doggett St Brisbane |
2012 | The Loaded Ground | Drill Hall ANU Canberra |
2012 | FWG (Hymn to the Night) | Melbourne Art Fair |
2013 | Memoires Vives | Musee d’Aquitaine Bordeaux, France |
2014 | Big Storm between Two Places | FWG Doggett St Brisbane |
2015 | Lightning Strikes at Merricks | Merricks Victoria |
2016 | Black, White and Restive | Newcastle Regional Gallery |
2017 | Meeting Place | APH Canberra |
2017 | FWG (Metafisica Australe) | Sydney Contemporary |
2017 | Metafisica | FWG Doggett St Brisbane |
2018 | The Call from Papunya | FWG Doggett St Brisbane |
2018 | Journey to Nowhere | Latvian National Museum of Art Riga Latvia |