For Art Basel, Château Shatto is exhibiting a selection of works by three Gija artists: Mabel Juli Wirroongoon (b. circa 1932), Freddie Timms (b. circa 1946, d. 2017) and Rammey Ramsey (b. circa 1939), all of whom maintained artistic practices within the Kimberley region of Western Australia. This presentation continues the gallery’s programming of superlative First Nations artists that emerged in Australia in the 20th century. 

Juli Wirroongoon, Timms and Ramsey belong to the Gija language group from the east of the Kimberley region of Western Australia, a vast ecological and cultural zone larger than any country in Western Europe. All three artists’ work is materially composed of natural pigments and ochre sourced from the earth of the artists’ ancestral country and formally defined by the potent minimalist compositions that situate a complex cosmology within contingent phenomena of the postcolonial world.