Paddy Bedford : gouache

Melbourne and New York : D’Lan Contemporary, 2024. Quarto, illustrated laminated boards, lettered in silver, pp. 104, illustrated. New copy.

‘Internationally renowned as one of Australia’s most highly regarded First Nations artists, Goowoomji Nynkuny Paddy Bedford was a senior Gija lawman who became a critical figure in East Kimberley painting. Paddy Bedford: Gouache is the first major monograph on the artist since his retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, in 2006.

This essential publication offers a fresh perspective on Paddy Bedford’s studio practice and evolving relationship with his subject and medium, reasserting his place as one of the most significant artists in the history of the Australian First Nations art movement. Known for his powerful ochre paintings representing his mother’s and father’s Country, Bedford also produced a splendid body of work on paper alongside his elegant and sober canvases. Paddy Bedford’s art practice on paper reveals the artist’s profound love of painting and his instinctive gestural approach to line and form, now celebrated in Paddy Bedford: Gouache.

Produced in collaboration between D’Lan Contemporary and the Estate of Paddy Bedford, this book features over eighty works on paper, many of which have never been seen before, having been held in trust since the artist’s passing in 2007. Paddy Bedford: Gouache also includes written contributions from those who knew Bedford and his practice
intimately – including friend and executor Frances Kofod, curator Georges Petitjean – with an overview from D’Lan Contemporary’s Head of Research, Vanessa Merlino.

This book will be an invaluable addition for art collectors, art history scholars, art and art history students, and anyone interested in Australian art and Contemporary First Nations Australian art.’ – the publisher