Art & About - May
Nomad Art Gallery has been a stalwart of the Parap arts community for the past 13 years but this month that journey draws to a close as owners Rose and Angus Cameron redevelop the business and close the shopfront. They had a chat about what’s ahead for Nomad.
You’re closing the doors in Parap but it’s not a forever goodbye, tell us a bit more about what’s ahead for Nomad Art?
We are relocating to a private base in Darwin and will operate only by appointment and online to promote significant works to collectors.
We will take a more historical view point, reflecting on some of the great print making artists in the Top End and central desert over the last 20 plus years. In addition we will be doing educational and curatorial consultancies and projects within the industry.
Why have you closed the shopfront?
It is time for us to liberate ourselves from the retail outlet and have greater flexibility. We will become true Nomads by taking works to collectors interstate and beyond. Our move creates the opportunity for fresh energy to come into the Darwin art space.
What are the advantages of going online?
Focusing online will enable us to pro-mote to a broader market and International audience. We can also work with the print collections in more depth and curate bodies of work for collectors and art lovers. We will be able to reflect upon the dynamic period of art making in the Top End over recent years as well as promote and launch new bodies of work.
What are your fondest memories of your time in Parap?
The projects Replant: A New Generation of Botanical Art (2006) and Djalkiri: we are standing on their names - Blue Mud Bay (2010) with various artists including Djambawa Marawilli, Fiona Hall and John Wolseley with Basil Hall.
With these projects we invited artists to work together in a cross-cultural dialogue with other experts in their field. Both of these projects toured Australia and in the case of Djalkiri, has resulted in a major collaborative project with John Wolseley and Mulkun Wirrpanda called Midawarr, to be shown at MAGNT later this year.
Darwin Dogs | Fri 4 – Fri 25 May | See the event listing
