Gertie Huddleston

Gertie Huddleston (c. 1916-2013)[1] was a highly successful Aboriginal artist from southern Arnhem Land. She was one of the first contemporary artists to work in the Ngukurr community and has contributed to Aboriginal art with her unique style. Huddleston's exact birth date is unclear, with sources ranging between 1916 and 1933.[2][3]

Gertie Huddleston
Borncirca 1916-1933
Died2013
NationalityAustralian
Known forContemporary Indigenous Australian art
Spouse(s)Bill Huddleston
RelativesBetty Roberts (sister), Angelina George (sister), Eva Rogers (sister), Dinah Garadji (sister)
Awards1999 National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award

Biography

Gertie Huddleston was born and raised at the Roper River Mission, now the Ngukurr community, an Anglican mission in Southern Arnhem Land.[4] Her Wanderangand Mara heritage stems from her father, and her Ngandi and Yugal heritage stems from her mother.[5] Her upbringing at the Roper River Mission as well as her parent's beliefs, influenced Huddleston's Christian faith, causing her work to address the intersection of these beliefs with the Aboriginal world. Her time spent at the mission also enlarged her knowledge of gardening and caring for the landscape. Huddleston spoke highly of her time spent working on the mission gardens with her family.[6] Mission gardens are a recurring theme in Huddleston's paintings, focusing on the neat, orderly use of the natural landscape, depicting scenes of abundance in the context of human control.

Huddleston's father as well as her fiancé, Bill Huddleston, served as soldiers in World War II. Bill and Gertie were married shortly after the end of the war. Huddleston and her husband then decided to move to the Roper Valley Cattle Station, about 60 kilometers outside of Ngukurr, where she worked as a cook for almost a decade, before moving back to Ngukurr in the late 1960s. She would later leave Ngukurr in 1982 to move to Darwin for her daughter, who was a patient in a hospital for several weeks. During this period, she stated, "The doctors told me to talk to her and I stayed with her. I stayed there after that for a long time." Though this was a difficult time for Huddleston, it gave her the freedom to travel and explore Arnhem Land and Central Australia. Images from these travels, including Gunbalanya, the Flinders Range and the deserts of Central Australia appear in a few of her paintings, including the 1996 piece Different Landscapes around Ngukurr.[7]

Describing one of the panels in this piece, Huddleston noted

"I was thinking that part long St. Vidgeon area... Big waterhole there. We were travelling lots on foot everywhere, me and my sisters and my brothers and my daddy and mummy. We were travelling all over when we were small... St. Vidgeon area. Like that's our country. Big waterhole there. I was thinking about that too you know when I was drawing that. We have the cave, caves where dead people died inside the cave. They bin reckon big snake went there and burnt them... and left only the bones. We used to go up there with the traditional owner, that old man [and] our aunty. We used to go and rub that bone with red ochre... It'll stay long preserve when we rub them, no animal in there."[8]

Thus, Huddleston's work can be understood to incorporate themes of landscape and country, family history and ancestral past, and memory and imagination. Additionally, Huddleston includes Christianity as a recurring motif in her paintings. Sometimes it is through obvious title references, as in the case of her 1999 piece Garden of Eden II. In general, Huddleston noted the abundance of trees, plants, and bushes, in reference to biblical significance of her landscape. The layered bush gardens within her works give meaningful expression to syncretic belief systems. In one interview in which she described the Myall lookout, she stated,

"There are lots of different trees and bushes around this area. Ghost gums, cycads, palms and many others. Lots of different plants and a lotta bush tucker. Winter-time, after rain. I am a Christian and this painting reminds me of the Garden of Eden - like in the Bible."[8]

Although Huddleston's work is not known for overly biblical imagery, it is clear that biblical undertones can be read into her interpretation of landscape and country. Cath Bowdler, in her catalogue for Colour Country: Art from the Roper River, explains how Christianity informs Huddleston's work,

"Gertie Huddleston is a practising Christian, who also maintains traditional beliefs and knowledge systems. Her paintings represent an Aboriginal world-view as well as a Christian one in which she depicts ‘country’ consciously and joyously as a ‘Garden of Eden’, and as such, an abundant source of bush tucker and medicine. [Her] paintings reflect a wholly indigenous experience of ‘country’ despite their Christian allusions and their superficial resemblance to Western landscape paintings. Gertie’s story of walking between two worlds is reflected in her paintings."[3]

Career

Huddleston, along with her four sisters, began using a new style of acrylic painting on canvas and paper in the late eighties. Her early work was based off of the work of Willie Gudabi and Moima Willie, until she was able to develop her own individual style. This unique style consisted of a rich palette of colours and intricately detailed flora and fauna of her country. In addition to this, her paintings contained various types of brush strokes which reflect the embroidery that she learned as a young girl in the Roper River Mission.[9] Huddleston's newfound art techniques were exceedingly modernist in comparison to other Aboriginal artists. Her use of colours and choice to complement her nature-based paintings with metaphorical storytelling elements, made her paintings extremely pleasing to Western viewers.[10]

In 1987, under the guidance of the Northern Territory Open College of TAFE, the Ngukurr Arts Center began using acrylic paint on canvas as major medium.[11] According to Janet McKenzie's review of Colour Country: Art from the Roper River, "The introduced materials provided an essential catalyst for an outpouring of imagery, for the development of dynamic and innovative works."[11]

Huddleston began painting with the Ngukurr Arts Center in 1993, six years after attending art workshops for the first time.[12] Her work explores the intersection of natural and artificial colours and landscapes. She began her artistic career with embroidery which heavily influenced her later painting style.[13] Brenda Croft, senior curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art at the National Gallery of Australia, states that Huddleston "embroiders the canvas with paint" through her inclusion of patchwork, tapestry, and quilting in her acrylic style.[14] Huddleston's use of embroidery imagery and technique "links the celebration of female work with the Women’s Movement and the reappraisal of marginalised individuals and cultures against the hegemony of Western art."[11]

Beginning in 1993, Karen Brown became Huddleston's art dealer. Brown organized a show at the Shades of Ochre Gallery on the Esplanade, and followed by three more shows in 1995, 1996, and 1997 at the Rebecca Hossack Gallery in London. In 1997 she had work included in the Ngundungunya: Art For Everyone show at the National Gallery of Victoria, putting her career in the national spotlight. In 2000, she went on to exhibit her work at the Adelaide Biennale: Beyond the Pale at the Art Gallery of South Australia.[15]

Her work Different Landscapes around Ngukurr was selected for the 14th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 1997, and her work Garden of Eden II would win the General Painting Prize at the 1999 National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA).[16]

Collections

Significant exhibitions

References
  1. Bowdler, Cath (2009). Colour Country: Art from the Roper River (PDF). Wagga Wagga: Wagga Wagga Art Gallery. p. 5.
  2. "Gertie Huddleston | Artists | NGV". www.ngv.vic.gov.au. Retrieved 4 May 2020.
  3. Bowdler, Cath (2009). Colour Country: Art from the Roper River (PDF). Wagga Wagga Art Gallery.
  4. Bowdler, Cath (2009). Colour Country: Art from the Roper River (PDF). Wagga Wagga: Wagga Wagga Art Gallery. p. 15.
  5. Bowdler, Cath (2009). Colour Country: Art from the Roper River (PDF). Wagga Wagga Art Gallery. pp. 46–55.
  6. Bowdler, Cath (2009). Colour Country: Art from the Roper River (PDF). Wagga Wagga Art Gallery. pp. 46–55.
  7. Bowdler, Cath (June 2008). Peintpeintbat: Four Artists from Roper Way. Canberra: The Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, The Australian National University. pp. 178–185. doi:10.25911/5d5e73a38fd09.
  8. Bowdler, Cath (June 2008). Peintpeintbat: Four Artists from Roper Way. Canberra: The Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, The Australian National University. doi:10.25911/5d5e73a38fd09.
  9. Spunner, Suzanne (1998). Branding the big art award at the top end (PDF). Art Monthly Australia. pp. 9–10.
  10. Durrant, Jamie (2018). Spirits in the Scrub - The artists of Ngukurr. Essentials Magazine.
  11. McKenzie, Janet. 2010. Review of “Colour Country: Art from the Roper River.” Studio International, July 7, 2010.
  12. Bowdler, Cath (June 2008). Peintpeintbat: Four Artists from Roper Way. Canberra: The Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, The Australian National University. p. 5. doi:10.25911/5d5e73a38fd09.
  13. Bowdler, Cath (June 2008). Peintpeintbat: Four Artists from Roper Way. Canberra: The Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, The Australian National University. p. 171. doi:10.25911/5d5e73a38fd09.
  14. Croft, Brenda (2000). Beyond the Pale: Contemporary Indigenous Art : 2000 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art. Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia. p. 39. ISBN 9780730830672.
  15. Bowdler, Cath (June 2008). Peintpeintpat: Four Artists from Roper Way. Canberra: The Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, The Australian National University. pp. 201–202. doi:10.25911/5d5e73a38fd09.
  16. Bowdler, Cath (June 2008). Peintpeintbat: Four Artists from Roper Way. Canberra: The Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, The Australian National University. p. 203. doi:10.25911/5d5e73a38fd09.
  17. Huddleston, Gertie. "We All Share Water". Item held by National Gallery of Australia. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  18. "Gertie Huddleston | Artists | NGV". www.ngv.vic.gov.au. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  19. Bowdler, Cath (June 2008). Peintpeintbat: Four Artists from Roper Way. Canberra: The Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, The Australia National University. pp. vii.
  20. Bowdler, Cath (2009). Colour Country: Art from the Roper River (PDF). Wagga Wagga Art Gallery.
  21. "2000 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Beyond the Pale: contemporary indigenous art". Art Gallery of South Australia. March–April 2000.
  22. Dreaming their way : Australian Aboriginal women painters. Kennedy, Brian P., 1961-, Boles, Margo Smith., Konau, Britta., National Museum of Women in the Arts (U.S.), Hood Museum of Art. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of Women in the Arts. 2006. ISBN 1-85759-442-8. OCLC 71788898.CS1 maint: others (link)

Further reading
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