Gina Sinozich - Flying Wanjinas - detail
About the Artist
ABC 7.30 Report: Amazing Art by Gina Sinozich 24/02/2005
One of the DreamRaiser Project iconic artists Gina Sinozich and her amazing art were highly appreciated and admired as illustrated in this ABC segment broadcast in 2005. In 2009, in collaboration with Vesna Tenodi, Gina created the Wanjina Watchers series for the Dreamtime Set in Stone Trilogy. The paintings were inspired by pre-aboriginal Australian rock art created by the pre-aboriginal race of Abrajanes. That enraged some very violent Aborigines, who started harassing, threatening and intimidating the DreamRaiser artists. More videos about the DreamRaiser remarkable artists will be posted in 2013.
Gina Sinozich
A naive-art painter that has astonished the world is the way Gina is usually introduced. This self-taught prolific painter, now 79, started painting when she was 70 and in a few years achieved worldwide recognition.
Her artwork is now on permanent display in the National Gallery of Australia, the Liverpool Museum, the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre and the Maritime Museum, and her works are also featured in numerous private collections in Australia, New Zealand, USA and Europe.
Gina’s works are now displayed for the first time in the Blue Mountains at ModroGorje Gallery in Katoomba.
Gina’s work has been highly praised by a number of experts for many different reasons, but the title of this exhibition, Genuine Gina, is very fitting, defining her art well – her powerful works are so bold, direct and honest, just as Gina herself, reflecting her extraordinary sensibility and the depth of her intuitive insight.
Artist’s Statement
Time to speak out
I paint Wanjinas because that’s the central part of Aboriginal spirituality. If someone said I should stick to my own tradition, I’d tell them
it’s all the same. Spirituality is one, God is one – call him what you will. There is the same wisdom in all of the world’s traditions.
What I know about the Aboriginal people really upsets me. Watching documentaries and seeing what poverty their remote communities live in, it’s horrible. Then I see their cave paintings and rock carvings and I get inspired.
Whatever I read and learn about them prompts a response, an artistic one.
I know what I’m doing and I know it is right. I know their Wanjinas have no mouth, but I paint most of my Wanjinas with a mouth, sometimes with a smile. I give them mouths, because they need to speak. They’ve been mute for too long. They say it’s time to speak out.
Gina Sinozich