KATUNGAL
(Salt Water People)

A Solo Exhibition
by Natalie Bateman

NATALIE BATEMAN
KATUNGAL (SEA PEOPLE)

OUR
STORY

Gallery Alchmey seeks to represent work across painting, drawing, photography,sculpture and mixed media. With a focus on contemporary and emergingartists with the gallery featuring work with a modern, figurative sensibility that is emotionally rich and poignant, and also conveying wit and humour.

Gallery Alchemy represents emerging and established artists that demonstratea sensitivity to the conundrums of modern life. With the galleries owninfluences stretching from Artemisia & Caravaggio to Van Gogh, to YellowHouse to Duchamp, Dada, Brett Whitely and Charlie Sheard.

Featured artists often reflect a sensibility for light, colour, purity of craft and ahint of neuroses and angst of modern life that ultimately gives way to beauty. “Idon’t believe in Art, I believe in the Artist”
– Marcel Duchamp

NATALIE BATEMAN

‘walawaani ngayaga walbanja-yuin ngaranggal Natalie Bateman’.
Safe travels to and from your destination, I am a walbanja-yuin woman. Our language group is ‘dhurga’. The totem for our Yuin tribe is ‘wambaara’-black duck. This is my mother’s country. Our great grandparents had the last tribal marriage here and our ancestors were born on Gulaga Mountain, (our place of dreaming.)
We grew up in Sydney, La Perouse and Maroubra Beach. I was born in 1972. Kadoo (ocean), is our Great nans family name and they originated from the Batemans Bay Nelligen area and Milton/Ulludulla. We are sea people.
Acrylics, watercolours, and Japanese inks are the mediums I enjoy using. Mainly using triangles sometimes dots as my featured shapes. Using triangles represents my DNA, who I am, and my strong connection to this land and country that we all belong to.
Throughout my works, I freely express the love I see in country, the upbringing we had with our grandparents. This land of ours gives so much energy. It fills my heart knowing our ancestors walked country singing dancing and fishing. We are storytellers, nuturer’s, hunters and protectors of our family and environment. All of this love and connection is channelled through my paintings. I love creating vibrant uplifting paintings that tell of the way that it used to be told by my grandparents.