Whats on
Cross Currents
Exhibition opens 5 August and closes 30 August 2010
Arone Meeks
Arone Meeks is a Kuku Midigi man who was born in 1957. He grew up near El Arish in far north Queensland and now lives in Cairns. Since 1985 he has forged an impressive national and international career for his painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking and public art commissions.
The Moree Plains Gallery has important works by Meeks in its collection. They were acquired in 1994 when the artist’s first Moree solo exhibition was staged. The Australia Council and Arts NSW have generously funded this 2010 Meeks exhibition enabling us to transport his work from Cairns and for his travel to Moree to give printmaking workshops.
His indigenous links are with the Kokomidiji of Cape York, around Laura, the site of renowned rock art galleries filled with graceful drawings of quinkans (traditional ancestral spirits). Laura is known as a place of Aboriginal magic and sorcery. This country has a palpable effect on the artist’s imagery. He feels a physical reaction to sacred country that helps forge relationships with kinship, a sense of self and, as he said, “renewing the dreaming”.
The artist had a traditional as well as formal art education. He was taught by his grandfather and other relatives before his Bachelor of Visual Arts studies at Sydney’s City Art Institute. He later returned to Queensland to study with tribal elders, including the Lardil people of Mornington Island.
Meeks is famed for his illustrations for children’s books, including “When the world was new”, “This is Still Rainbow Snake Country” and “The Pheasant and Kingfisher”. He wrote and illustrated “Enora and the Black Crane” for which he won the 1992 UNICEF: Ezra Jack Keats Award for International Excellence in Children’s Book Illustration.
Meeks is represented in many national and international public and private collections.
Arone Meeks
Arone Meeks is a Kuku Midigi man who was born in 1957. He grew up near El Arish in far north Queensland and now lives in Cairns. Since 1985 he has forged an impressive national and international career for his painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking and public art commissions.
The Moree Plains Gallery has important works by Meeks in its collection. They were acquired in 1994 when the artist’s first Moree solo exhibition was staged. The Australia Council and Arts NSW have generously funded this 2010 Meeks exhibition enabling us to transport his work from Cairns and for his travel to Moree to give printmaking workshops.
His indigenous links are with the Kokomidiji of Cape York, around Laura, the site of renowned rock art galleries filled with graceful drawings of quinkans (traditional ancestral spirits). Laura is known as a place of Aboriginal magic and sorcery. This country has a palpable effect on the artist’s imagery. He feels a physical reaction to sacred country that helps forge relationships with kinship, a sense of self and, as he said, “renewing the dreaming”.
The artist had a traditional as well as formal art education. He was taught by his grandfather and other relatives before his Bachelor of Visual Arts studies at Sydney’s City Art Institute. He later returned to Queensland to study with tribal elders, including the Lardil people of Mornington Island.
Meeks is famed for his illustrations for children’s books, including “When the world was new”, “This is Still Rainbow Snake Country” and “The Pheasant and Kingfisher”. He wrote and illustrated “Enora and the Black Crane” for which he won the 1992 UNICEF: Ezra Jack Keats Award for International Excellence in Children’s Book Illustration.
Meeks is represented in many national and international public and private collections.