Deco Mag features bay gallery home's australian aboriginal wallpapers, tiles & rug collection as part of its Spring 2017 eco-friendly drive for stylish interiors.
Based in London, Deco Mag is for everyone who loves great design and stylish interiors but wants to do things in the most eco friendly way. We feature in their 'News' section, and with them hope that 2017 will prove a great year for ethically driven beautiful interiors.
This Ngapa Jukurrpa, or Water Dreaming is the work of a master of colour field abstraction: Shorty Jangala Robertson. Described as a stetson-wearing superstar, he didn’t start painting until he was quite elderly. After a life of struggle and trauma involving being hunted by “white fella” during the Coniston massacre, and being separated from his mother during WW2, Shorty became a sought after world class artist. His paintings are found in collections around the world, and notably in the New South Wallers Art Gallery.
The technical expertise of our collaborators is key to our pioneering core range of wallpapers, ceramics wall tiles & rugs, and our made to order service.
My Country is unique in translating authentic Central Australian Aboriginal artwork into interior surfaces. Due to the meaning and spiritual importance of every element in the artworks, we make sure to enlist state of the art techniques to preserve the detailed quality of each piece.
Translating the quality of the artists' brushstrokes and character, and in particular their sophisticated use of colour across mediums posed a real technical challenge, to which our collaborators masterfully rose!
The wonderful throbbing, pulsating and constantly moving work of Pauline Nangala Gallagher is influenced by a semi-blindness in one eye. Whilst this might be a disadvantage in day to day life, it gives her a wholly unique perspective. Pauline’s country is Pikilyi (Vaughan Springs), a sacred water hole 350 km north-west of Alice Springs. Canvases and paints have been dropped to this remote location since 2005. Pauline paints her stories using a huge array of colours influenced by the colours of her country.
Bay Gallery Home offers bespoke, made to order rugs from our vast collection of authentic Australian Aboriginal Artworks recounting the Aboriginal Dreamtime.
My Country rugs are hand-knotted and available in wool, bamboo silk, Chinese silk or art viscose silk. They can be made to any size, colours may be altered, though the design must stay the same.
Our rugs are manufactured through the ‘GoodWeave’ programme and distributed from the UK.
The artist, Shanna, is the great grand-daughter of Paddy Japaljarri Sims (Dec) and Bessie Nakamarra Sims (Dec), two of the senior Aboriginal artists at the forefront of the Aboriginal art movement. Shanna started painting when she was 14 years old. Her favourite Jukurrpa, or Dreaming, is the highly complex Water Dreaming, Puyurru, which she depicts in deceptively simple terms and an unrestricted palette.
Bay Gallery Home offers bespoke, made to order rugs from our vast collection of authentic Australian Aboriginal Artworks recounting the Aboriginal Dreamtime.
My Country rugs are hand-knotted and available in wool, bamboo silk, Chinese silk or art viscose silk. They can be made to any size, colours may be altered, though the design must stay the same.
Our rugs are manufactured through the ‘GoodWeave’ programme and distributed from the UK.
"We look for these plants in rocky country, we can find a little purple plum that we use to clean the kidneys and sometimes for flu. The yellow flowers are used for scabies, we boil them in water and wash our skin with it. The pink flowers we use for when we have sore eyes, we mix the flowers with water and the colour changes to a light green."
The Australian Aboriginal people are the one of the oldest continuous populations on earth, and their visual language is considered one of the world’s oldest Art forms, spanning over 50,000 years. The connection to 'country' is essential. Their tribal Dreamings, creation and mapping myths, rituals and sacred topography inspire bold, beautiful abstract paintings featuring the landscape, plants and animals of Australia's central desert. The Aboriginals see no difference between themselves, the sky, the land and the animals they share it with. All are one and the same.
Australian Bustard birds feature in this Bush Onion Dreaming story, traditionally jealous of the larger, stronger Emu. The altercations between these birds are often recounted in Australian Aboriginal lore.
This sequence of four tiles is made up of two end tile designs and one middle tile design that can be used as many times as desired. It creates a lovely dynamic symmetrical effect at large scale, we encourage you to use it as a focal point, border or in one of our furniture designs!.
Bush onion, or janmarda, can be found in the river banks and are dug up using digging sticks. The Aboriginal people wait for the leaves to dry out before eating it. So long as the bulb is white inside, it will be eaten raw or cooked.
Through her painting, the tile artist Sarah Napurrula White is telling a Bush Onion Dreaming, or Janmarda Jukurrpa. One of the main sites for this story is Purrupurru, in the remote red centre of Australia, where you can see an old Jungarrayi man in the form of a large stone figure.
Sarah also likes to paint Bush Onion Dreamings because she likes the designs and patterns. When she’s not painting, Sarah works for the aged and children, and on weekends she loves to go hunting with the old people.
The majority of our artists are women who play an active role in their communities, not only practically but in building communal ties through the visual language of Dreamtime painting.
With their geometric harmony, these ceramic tiles lend themselves to versatile use, from en masse styling as a splash back, to design feature in our bespoke furniture range.
Emu Dreaming denotes a sacred waterhole where initiation ceremonies are performed. The jealousy between Emus and the Australian Bustard are a theme of Dreamtime, and they would be found fighting over bush raisins around the site...
The artist, Sarah Napurrarula White, lives and paints several hours away from the main art centre. Every few weeks art centre workers drive three hours to the remote settlement on her traditional homelands that she shares with her young family.
Her paintings were used for several tile designs due to their simple, beautiful graphic nature – giving them an aesthetic versatility when used in space: whether modern, rustic or eclectic!
In this depiction, Michelle Pula Morton introduces us to a microscopic view of the land she cherishes, an intimate portrayal that is a distinct departure from her typical work.
In 2013, Michelle was awarded the 30th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA) People’s Choice in 2013. The award recognises important contributions made by Indigenous artists from regional and urban areas throughout Australia, working in both traditional and contemporary media
"This is my country. I paint because I enjoy painting. My Mother, Edie Holmes let us paint with her when we where young and now we paint all the time. We still paint and talk together in a family group with our kids."
As Alana Ngwarraye paints, children and extended family gather and tell stories. Having learnt the skill from her mother, her painting now supports her four children.
Today we celebrate Australia's cultural richness by remembering the Australian Aboriginal Flag and its symbolic colours: black for the aboriginal people of Australia; yellow for the sun – the protector & giver of life; red for the earth, the ceremonial red ochres and the Aboriginal peoples' spiritual relationship to the land.
"Our Artile service was truly challenged by this commission, because we weren't just recapturing an image but a culture, a history, and all of its folklore and traditions."
Harry Foster, Specialist Products Manager at Johnson Tiles
Notice the sugar bag tree, rendered here in yellow by Lilly – a natural bee sweetener found in tree hollows, it is a favoured motif of hers.
Lilly's husband is the legendary Banjo Petyarre Morton, who led the historical Aboriginal stockmen walk-offs of 1949, successfully winning the fundamental right to earn wages instead of rations.
Lilly's landscapes beautifully communicate the rich knowledge she possesses of both medicinal plants and country, the heart of her culture.
As a young girl, Lilly lived traditionally off of the land with her family and Alyawarr people. In Lilly's lifetime, she has experienced and borne witness to the irreversible changes of country and way of life, previously unchanged for thousands of years.
She is now a kind and gentle elder of the community, and often tells her family and friends stories of how life used to be in Alywarre, her language. These stories are also a great inspiration for many of the artists within the community.
Lilly is passionate about nature, especially her country and the plants that grow on it, and though she has little English, she is ever keen to explain the various bush medicines which she depicts in her paintings.
"Our art is born from the dreams of each artist and the intense colours we see in our land."
My Countryreferences the Australian Aboriginal philosophy and creative process, whereby all of creation is in relationship, at one with the land.
In our pioneering translations of our artists' artwork into interiors ranges : wallpapers, tiles, rugs, we bring something of the character of Australia's landscapes into your homes.
The artwork we represent stands in the tradition of a sophisticated visual language, composed of layers of regular irregularities of colour, geometry, repetition and scale dynamics.
The particular provenance and symbols of this art – mapping myths, rituals and sacred topography – results in a compelling, versatile aesthetic with a most subtle compositional depth of field. It imbues spaces with wider horizons of the imagination.