Title

Karedada, Rosie.

Author

Australian Art Print Network.

Source

[Not applicable]

Publication date

2001

Type

Biography

Language

English

Country of context

Australia

Full text

Rosie Karedada

Born in Kalumburu c.1927, Rosie Karedada is a senior artist noted for her depiction of the Wandjina spirit figure. She has exhibited widely and is represented in most major collections in Australia. Rosie is married to Louis Karadeda, another celebrated artist from the same community.

She has a bold and uncompromising style of free drawing, reliant on harsh tonal contrasts that give her works a characteristic brightness. The imagery is simple and often painted with thick, red-ochre outlines on a white ground.

Karedada’s memories of growing up are clouded by the influence of a rigid Benedictine mission which was established in this area in 1907. The mission tried to enforce an assimilationist Christian message at odds with Aboriginal religion. Karedada clearly remembers the conditions of mission rule and can recall her time spent digging, planting mango trees and irrigating the mission gardens with water lugged on her back from the creek. Boys and girls were made to sleep separately away from their parents in segregated dormitories, a deliberate disruption of the family and of parental teaching. Regular visits to cave sites for instruction, family storytelling and food gathering sessions, previously integral to Woonambal socioeconomic education, were all supplanted by compulsory work, adherence to discipline and “whitefella Sundays.”

The current situation in Kalumburu is one of Aboriginal control.

Biography courtesy of The Australian Art Print Network, 2001.
© Australianprints

Last Updated

21 Sep 2020