Lawrence Pennington

Lawrence Pennington is a senior Spinifex artist whose spacious, iconographic paintings vibrate with cultural knowledge and the stark beauty of his remote Great Victoria Desert homeland. Born at Urlu around 1934, just outside the north-eastern boundary of Spinifex country, Lawrence grew up living a fully traditional hunter-gatherer life with no contact with Western civilization. His initiations as a young man gave him intimate physical and spiritual knowledge of the sites and stories of his country, particularly the Walawuru (wedge-tailed eagle) Dreaming that runs through his stretch of land. Lawrence's country is characterized by craggy-topped breakaways, thinly connected dry salt lakes, and reddish sand plains that can appear hauntingly bleak or soaringly beautiful depending on the light. Like his contemporaries, Lawrence was brought into Cundeelee Mission during the government sweeps of the late 1950s, arriving as a young initiated man. He married late at Cundeelee and had one son. Lawrence painted collaboratively and individually in the early years of Spinifex Arts Project before leaving Tjuntjuntjara for approximately seven years, returning permanently when his son underwent Men's Law ceremony. His work has been exhibited extensively internationally, including solo exhibitions at Aboriginal and Pacific Arts Sydney (2017) and ReDot Fine Art Gallery Singapore (2016). He was a finalist in the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards in 2018 and 2019. Lawrence's paintings are held in major collections including the National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of South Australia, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, and the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection at the University of Virginia.

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Lawrence Pennington

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