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Arone Raymond Meeks was born in Laura in Far North Queensland. This
is his tribal area.
He has had both a traditional and formal education, having been
taught by his grandfather and other relatives before going to study
at the City Art Institute in Sydney. He later returned to Queensland
to study with various tribal elders, including those of the Lardil
people of Mornington Island.
Meeks values this combination of training and experience; his work
employs both traditional images and themes arising out of his concern
with the issue of land rights.
A former member of the Boomalli urban Aboriginal artist’s co-operative,
he won an Australia Council fellowship to study in Paris in 1989
and went on to exhibit throughout Europe and North and South America.
Arone begun printmaking in 1982 in collaboraton with printmaker
Theo Tremblay. His work was also influenced by his participation
in a cultural exchange to Santa Fe, in the United States, during
the 1990s. He believes that: “Printmaking has given me another medium
of creativity to explore. The directness and fluid qualities have
made it possible to introduce a freshness and immediacy to my work.
I begun to create a new language of symbols through this process”.
He has a very keen eye for graphic detail and always works with
several possibilities as he enters an intellectual discourse with
the work.
He is well known 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’ which won the 1992 UNICEF- Ezra Jack Keats
Award for International Excellence in Children’ s Book Illustration.
collections
Artbank, Sydney.
Art Gallery of Intro, Canada.
Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth.
Australian National Gallery, Canberra.
Australian Museum, Sydney.
Australian National Museum, Canberra.
Australia Post.
Central Collection, Australian National University, Canberra.
Flinders University Art Museum, Adelaide.
Institute of American Indian Art Santa Fe.
Kelton Foundation, Los Angeles, USA.
Massachusetts College of Art, Boston.
Nationale Bibliotech de Paris.
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
National Gallery of Japan.
National Maritime Museum, Darling Harbour, Sydney.
National Museum of Australia, Canberra.
Oodgeroo Collection Qld. University of Technology.
Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane.
Robert Holmes a Court Collection, Perth.
The Simons Foundation, Vancouver, Canada.
University of NSW.
University of Qld, OTC Australia.
Private Collections, Japan, France, USA, Argentina, Australia.
exhibitions
Individual exhibitions
1995 Arone, Le Cake,Cairns, FNQ.
1995 Black Crane, Lizard of Oz, Taos, New Mexico.
1996 What Now - A New Direction, Adrian Newstead Gallery, Sydney.
1997 Common Ground, including collaborative works from Santa Fe,
Drill Hall ANU.
1999 Cycad Dreaming, Solo Exhibition, The Tanks,Cairns FNQ.
1999 Fetish - Flinders University Art Museum,Feast Festival, Adelaide.
2000 Towards a New Dreaming, Cooee Aboriginal Art Gallery, Sydney.
group exhibitions
1978 Travelling exhibition in Germany: Munich, Dusseldorf and Kline.
1980 Seymour Centre, Sydney.
1981 Artists for Aboriginal Land Rights, Ampira, Sydney.
1982 Aboriginal Week Exhibition, AGNSW.
1983 Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Bondi Community Pavilion, Sydney.
1984 Koori Art ’84, Artspace, Sydney.
1984 The First National Aboriginal Art Award Exhibition, Museum
and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin.
1986 Urban Koories, Willoughby Workshop Arts Centre, Sydney.
1987 Cooper Gallery, Sydney.
1987 Dalkuna Mnunuway Nhe Rom, Foreign Exchange Gallery, Armadale,
Victoria.
1987 Art and Aboriginality, Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth, UK.
1987 Aboriginal Australian views in print and poster, travelling
exhibition, Print Council of Australia.
1987 Coo-ee Emporium, Sydney.
1987 Australian Geographics.
1988 Craft Council exhibition, Sydney.
1988 Aboriginal Artists Gallery, Sydney.
1988 Perc Tucker Gallery, Townsville.
1988 Capricorn Galleries, Port Douglas, Queensland.
1988 Defacto Apartheid, Performance Space, Sydney.
1988 ANCAAA and Boomalli, Boomalli Ko-op, Sydney.
1989 A Koori Perspective, Artspace, Sydney.
1989 Aboriginal Art: The Continuing Tradition, National Gallery
of Australia, Canberra.
1990 Painted Ship, Painted Oceans, S. H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney.
1990 Balance 1990: views, visions, influences, QAG, Brisbane.
1993 Ten years of acquisitions, from ANU collection, Drill Hall
Gallery ACT.
1993 Commitments, MOCA, Brisbane 1993.
1994 Malu Urul, National Maritime Museum, Sydney 1995 Local Colours,
Cairns Regional Gallery, FNQ.
1994 Trade Routes, Moree Regional Gallery and Armidale Aboriginal
Keeping Place.
1996 Tribal Metaphysics - a Meeting Place,Grosvenor Place,Sydney
Collaboration with Liz Gallie,Cairns Regional Gallery, FNQ.
1996 Cairns International Airport Commission.8 Panels, 56 metre
Sculptural Frieze.
1997 Children’s Art Exhibition touring Italy, Germay, France to
1999, Ashton Scholastic.
1998 Large commissioned work, Bulletin Place, Sydney.
1988 Selected work, Blake Prize for Religious Art, Sydney.
1999 Body, Group Show, The Tanks, Cairns FNQ.
1999 Meeks and Company,Mardi Gras Exhibition, Cooee Aboriginal Art
Gallery, Sydney.
1999 Love Magic Group Show, SH Ervin Gallery, National Trust, Sydney.
1999 Private Commission, Synergy Telecommunications, Germany.
1999 Commission, Cairns Convention Centre, Sculptural Frieze, 8
panels.
1999 Respect, Group Show, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane.
1999 16th NATSI Art Award, MAGNT, Darwin
bibliography
1986, Urban Koories, exhib. cat., Workshop Arts Centre, Willoughby,
New South Wales.
1989, Nothing to Celebrate? Australian Aboriginal Political Art
and the Bicentennial, exhib. cat., Flinders University Art Museum.
1989, Australian Perspecta 1989, A Biennial Survey of Contemporary
Australian Art, exhib. cat., Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.
1989, A Koori Perspective, exhib. cat., Artspace, Sydney.
1990, Balance 1990: Views, Visions, Influences, exhib. cat., Queensland
Art Gallery, Brisbane. (C)
Aboriginal Arts Management Association, 1990, Contemporary Aboriginal
Art 1990 - from Australia (presented by the Aboriginal Arts Committee,
Australia Council and Third Eye Centre, Glasgow), exhib. cat., Redfern,
New South Wales. (C)
Berndt, C. H., 1987, Pheasant and Kingfisher, illustrated by Ray
Meeks, Bookshelf Books, Horwitz Grahame Pty. Ltd., United Kingdom.
Boomalli Five Koorie Artists (d: Michael Riley) 1988. (C)
Butler, R., 1986, ‘From dreamtime to machine time,’ Imprint 21(3-4),
12,13. (C)
Johnson, T. and Johnson, V.,1984, Koori Art ’84, exhib. cat., Art
Space, Sydney. (C)
Caruana, W., 1993, Aboriginal Art, Thames and Hudson, London. (C)
Isaacs, J., 1989, Aboriginality: Contemporary Aboriginal Paintings
and Prints, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Queensland.
(C)
Johnson, V., 1987, Art and Aboriginality, exhib. cat., Aspex Gallery,
Portsmouth, UK.
McCulloch, A., & McCulloch, S., 1994, The Encyclopedia of Australian
Art, Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd, St Leonards, New South Wales.
Lambert, A., 1984, ‘Shattering the myth that Aboriginal art exists
only in traditional forms,’ Australian Artist, 1(4), 24-25. (C)
Meeks, A.R., 1991, Enora and the Black Crane, Ashton Scholastic,
Sydney. (C)
Samuels, J. and C. Watson, 1987, Australian Aboriginal Views in
Print and Poster, Print Council of Australia, Melbourne.
Stamp Bulletin - Australia, Jan 1986, Melbourne, No. 182.
Scott-Mundine, D., 1990, ‘Black on Black: an Aboriginal perspective
on Koori art,’ Art Monthly Australia Supplement (The land, the city
- the emergence of urban Aboriginal art), 7-9. (C)
Watson, C., 1987, Dalkuna Mnunuwuy Nhe Rom, exhib. cat., Foreign
Exchange, Armadale, Victoria.
Watson, C., 1990, ‘The Bicentenary and beyond: recent developments
in Aboriginal printmaking,’ Special Double Issue Artlink 10(1&2),
70-73. (C)
Aboriginal Art Prints Home
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region
North East Queensland
state
Qld
community
Sydney, Townsville, Dunk Island
born
1957
active
1978
medium
Linocut prints, etchings, carved and painted wooden sculpture, carving, acrylic and oil paint on canvas, lacquered inks.
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