Paddy Nyunkuny Bedford was a prominent Gija artist, born at Bedford Downs Station in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia. He worked as a stockman and, as a senior law man of his tribe, was involved in maintaining cultural customs and traditions, including traditional painting for ceremonial purposes.
It was only in 1998, that he started to paint on canvas and later in gouache on paper. He joined the newly formed Jirrawun Arts group and became part of the East Kimberley/Turkey Creek movement led by Rover Thomas and Queenie McKenzie. In a short period of eight years, Paddy Bedford became one of the most important Indigenous artists of Australia. His work gained recognition for its bold, graphical style, striking colours, and precise use of white dots.
Central to Bedford’s paintings are the ever present Ngarranggarni or Dreaming, the dramatic East Kimberley landscape, and the historical events that occurred there. He went beyond the limitations of ‘Aboriginal art’, imposed by art advisors and galleries, by rejecting stereotypes and experimenting with a wider range of materials and colors.
His works are held in major public and private collections worldwide, like in the National Gallery of Australia and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MoMA), New York. After his death in 2007, his works were sold in auctions as support for his community through the Paddy Bedford Education Trust. Both works offered by SmithDavidson Gallery were part of this benefit auction, as well as having been included in the artist’s retrospective at Aboriginal Art Museum Utrecht (AAMU), The Netherlands.