Adnate is one of the giants of big-wall painting and street art. His prodigious talent and unrivalled ability to create evocative and enlightened portraits of men, women and children who live outside mainstream Western culture have added a new dimension to social consciousness and awareness of the nugatory impact of stereotyping..

In his first solo exhibition in Sydney, Adnate’s imagery is downscaled to suit the gallery wall—yet the power of his vision has intensified.

Adnate uses the faces of his subjects—whether a child from Arnhem Land, a woman from India or a monk from Tibet—to reveal the mutuality of human experience. For Indigenous Australians, their very being derives from the Land, their identity from their Country. In this exhibition Adnate honours the innocent yet old, wise eyes of the children of the communities, conveying with compassionate intensity the vital knowledge transmitted from generation to generation by elders, through story, ceremony and music.

Adnate's relationship with the great musician Djalu Gurruwiwi, who is regarded as the greatest didgeridoo player alive, has given him access to a culture that few experience and fewer can record. With Djalu travelling to Sydney for the opening of this exhibition, a unique Australian cultural transaction and exchange will be dynamically memorialised.

Ralph Hobbs
May 2015