Collection Online
Medium
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
Measurements
170.3 × 280.4 cm
Place/s of Execution
Lockhart River, Queensland
Accession Number
DC2-2000
Department
Contemporary Art
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased through the NGV Foundation with the assistance of the Joan Clemenger Endowment, Governor, 2000
© Reproduced courtesy Samantha Hobson and Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne
Gallery location
Not on display
About this work

Samantha Hobson, who had been subjected to domestic violence, was encouraged by her mentor Rosella Namok to work in the Lockhart River Art Centre. In this work, she raged against the regular occurrence of drunken violence in the community by attacking a large canvas, using a broom laden with colour, and forged a dramatic expressionist style of expanses of sensuous colour, rendered shiny by layers of varnish. Hobson’s way of painting breaks with classic styles of Indigenous painting that derive from inherited iconography, the lines and dots of Western Desert acrylics and the rarrk (crosshatching) of ochres on bark.