The stranger artist : life at the edge of Kimberly painting

Winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Award 2021 Non-fiction category, The Stranger Artist is a true story of life, loss and friendship that cuts to the heart of one of Australia's most celebrated art movements. At a hinge-point in his life, artist and ex-gallerist Tony Oliver travelled to the East Kimberley, where he plunged into the crosscurrents and eddies of the Aboriginal art world. He would stay for almost a decade, working alongside a group of senior Gija artists, including acclaimed figures Paddy Bedford and Freddie Timms, to establish Jirrawun Arts, briefly one of the country's most successful and controversial Aboriginal painting collectives. The Stranger Artist follows Oliver's journey and the deep relationships he formed, an experience that forever altered his life's trajectory. His story will draw readers close to what he came to know of Kimberley life: the immersion of culture and spirituality in the everyday, the importance of Law, the deep and abiding connection to country, and the humour and tragedy that pervade the Aboriginal world. Evocative and absorbing in equal measure, The Stranger Artist tells not only of the connections that can be formed through the sharing of mutual interests and experiences, but of what it takes to live between cultures. Winner of the 2021 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Non-fiction. Set amid the striking landscapes of the East Kimberley, The Stranger Artist is an evocative and enthralling account of a remarkable decade in Australia's internationally acclaimed Aboriginal art movement. At the end of the twentieth century, one-time gallerist Tony Oliver finds himself deeply immersed within a group of senior Gija artists, among them the soon-to-be-renowned painters Paddy Bedford and Freddie Timms. Their unlikely bonds lead to the formation of the groundbreaking Jirrawun Arts, which quickly becomes one of Australia's most celebrated and controversial art collectives. As Oliver comes to share not only the artists' many successes but their tragedies too, his own life's trajectory will forever be altered. Quentin Sprague's The Stranger Artist is an extraordinary contribution to Australia's cultural history – a sensitive yet unflinching portrait of creative work, of a life between cultures, of both darkness and light. **Winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Award 2021 Non-fiction category, __The Stranger Artist__ is a true story of life, loss and friendship that cuts to the heart of one of Australia's most celebrated art movements.**At a hinge-point in his life, artist and ex-gallerist Tony Oliver travelled to the East Kimberley, where he plunged into the crosscurrents and eddies of the Aboriginal art world. He would stay for almost a decade, working alongside a group of senior Gija artists, including acclaimed figures Paddy Bedford and Freddie Timms, to establish Jirrawun Arts, briefly one of the country's most successful and controversial Aboriginal painting collectives. **The Stranger Artist**Evocative and absorbing in equal measure, tells not only of the connections that can be formed through the sharing of mutual interests and experiences, but of what it takes to live between cultures.