Page 59 - Annual Review 2008

RESOuRCES / 59
This enchanting painting by Lisa Adams comes from
the artist’s realisation that as she grows older her
thoughts and experiences have accumulated, as
have the thorns on the ladder. Self-knowing without
being psychoanalytical, Rose garden 2008 has a
surreal quality, but also recalls much older traditions of
illustrated proverbs and folk tales.
Rose Garden 2008 was included in The Salon Project,
which formed part of the exhibition ‘Contemporary
Australia: Optimism’. The Salon Project considered the
work of 12 contemporary Australian representational
painters and one video artist.
liSA
ADAMS
Rose Garden 2008
Lisa Adams / Rose garden 2008 / Oil on canvas / Purchased 2008 with funds from the Xstrata
Community Partnership Program through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection:
Queensland Art Gallery. © Lisa Adams, 2008
Lily Mindindil Karadada was born in the Prince Regent
River area in the Kimberley, Western Australia. She
is one of the most senior Kimberley artists whose
responsibility it is to represent the Wandjina spirit figure.
Karadada specialises in refined representations of
Wandjina spirits, which she often shows emerging from
a veil of dots (rain), referring to her connection with
water bubbling from a spring. A spring was observed
by her father at the time of her conception and he
named her Mindindil, meaning bubbles. Wandjina
figures are recognisable for their distinctive form. The
Wandjina spirit is said to have come from the sea and
the sky to create the features of the landscape and was
then absorbed into the walls of rock shelters and caves.
lily
MINDINDIL KARADADA
Wandjina figure 1990
Lily Mindindil Karadada / Tjarintjin/Woonambal people / Wandjina figure 1990 / Natural
pigments with bush gum on canvas / Purchased 2008 with funds from the Estate of Lawrence
F King in memory of the late Mr and Mrs SW King through the Queensland Art Gallery
Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
in Optimism's
Salon Project