Paddy Bedford

December 6th 2006 12:00 am | Visual Art | Review - By Diana Simmonds

A truly great Australian - Paddy Bedford

Paddy Bedford

In opening the summer exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney last night (December 5) the former Governor-General of Australia, Sir William Deane AC KBE, described the artist Paddy Bedford as "a truly great Australian". According to the MCA's director Elizabeth Ann McGregor, Bedford refers to the revered ex-GG as "my brother from Canberra".

It was an emotional occasion, witnessed by the 80-something-year-old artist from a wheelchair, but looking as dapper and cool as an elderly Blues Brother in a navy pinstripe suit, black fedora and shades. He acknowledged, with appreciative amusement, McGregor's greeting to him in the Gija language.

"I bet it's the first time he's heard Gija spoken with a Scottish accent," McGregor joked. More than that, it's probably the first time the artist heard a non-indigenous leader even attempt to honour him in his own language.

An easier task also fell to McGregor: conveying a message to the assembled art throng from the prime minister. It is the first time Mr Howard has ever sent a message to the MCA, McGregor noted. Only a cynic would think of 2007 as an election year.

In recent year Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art has been the instigator of some of the finest and most influential exhibitions of indigenous contemporary art seen in this country.

Think Kathleen Petyarre and Dorothy Napangardi - artists whose work, lent from collections around the world, dazzled viewers who had not had the opportunity ever before to see such work in such abundance.

This year, for the first time in a significant public space, it is the acknowledged master and elder custodian of law and story of the East Kimberley contemporary school, Paddy Bedford, whose work illuminates the spaces of the museum at Circular Quay.

Like so many major indigenous artists, Bedford took up the western tools of brushes, canvas, oils and gouache very recently - just the past eight years. In doing that he has transferred his lifetime of knowledge and experience of ceremony and country to a medium that the rest of us can enjoy, if not fully understand.

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