Melbourne Art Fair: John Prince Siddon

The extraordinary work of John Prince Siddon is a physical experience as much as a visual one, where the traditions of Indigenous and Contemporary art shift and transform into Prince’s unique motifs, stories and mark making that transport us into his world.

Possessing an iconic energy that feels familiar to rock stars, rebel cowboys and beatniks, Prince’s work is a poetry of visuals challenging the way we see the Australian landscape. Often painting while watching the news, his work depicts the latest in culture, current affairs and global concerns with desert iconography and the Narrangkarni (Dreamtime) interweaving in his work.

One of the most expressive bodies of work to hallmark the collective contemporary Indigenous art movement, Prince stands as one of Australia’s most influential artists…Strong and pertinent pieces, Prince’s works are brimming with passion, pattern, colour, and exuberance. – Jack Wilkie-Jans, Art Collector Magazine

A proud Walmajarri man and Chairman of Mangkaja Arts in Fitzroy Crossing, West Kimberly, Prince grew up with an artist father, Pompey Siddon, who was one of the founders of Mangkaja Arts. A stockman in his youth, Prince turned to art after losing his leg in a horse riding accident and while the centre provides essential artist materials and mediums, Prince works independently in the rooms of an assisted living facility where his wife lives; wanting to be close to her while he works is essential to his practice.

The preservation of Culture for future generations is of great concern and focus to him and his family. Issues affecting his community such as floods, domestic violence, loss of animal life, the threat of climate change and the destruction of cultural history are painted with an acidic colour palette seeped in psychedelia and electric energy.

As varied as his palette, so too are the materials he uses to create his work. Working on canvas, oil drums, satellite dishes, kangaroo pelts, 3D printed bullock skulls, boab nuts, feathers and wood, Prince’s work is in his own words ‘all mixed up’; there are no rules or limits to his creative endeavours, instead all is a conduit for his artistic expression.

Throughout this new body of work, the notion of ‘all mixed up’ flows into the concepts behind paintings such as We All Own The Land, Our Ancestors and Butterfly Dance, where spiders, kangaroos, locusts, fish, swans, dogs and horses all play a part in facilitating the growth and health of the landscape; and each other. Merging, intermingling, interweaving and conversing on the canvas, wildlife and insects work together.

Spiders helping out weaving, green locusts, all next-door neighbours, same Country. – John Prince Siddon

While his works express a vitality, playfulness and whimsy, there is an interesting underlying tension in his work, where animals crawl over each other, figures appear in mid fight and the social and political subjects come together in what acclaimed critic John McDonald describes as ‘a squirming, fecund view of a world in which everything threatens to eat everything else’. This is the very nature of life, and Prince has managed to capture it through his dynamic work.

Arthouse Gallery is thrilled to present this ground-breaking exhibition ‘Mother Tongue’ from John Prince Siddon at the Melbourne Art Fair 2024 alongside works commissioned by Cement Fondu and with the support of Mangkaja Arts, a non-profit, Indigenous owned and governed centre in the West Kimberley regions of Western Australia. They are innovators, as well as artistic and cultural leaders.

John Prince Siddon has been a finalist in the Sulman Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (2023), The Fisher's Ghost Art Award (2022) and the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA) at the Museum and Art Gallery Northern Territory (2021, 2020, 2019, 2018). He was also a featured artist at the Tarnanthi 2021 festival at the Art Gallery of South Australia. His solo exhibition ‘All Mixed Up’ at the Fremantle Arts Centre, presented in conjunction with the Perth Festival 2020, was heralded as the ‘stand-out exhibition’ of the festival by John McDonald of the Sydney Morning Herald. In 2022, the Art Gallery of New South Wales commissioned paintings from Prince for the opening of the Sydney Modern Project exhibition ‘Dreamhome: Stories of Art and Shelter’. In March 2024, he will have a major exhibition with Cement Fondu, ‘Disco Dreamtime Drums’. His works are included in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Art Gallery of South Australia and Artbank.