Paddy Nyunkuny Bedford

Recognised as one of the most important Indigenous Australian artists, Paddy Nyunkuny Bedford painted with a deep sense of cultural responsibility, drawing on his role as a respected senior Gija lawman and elder. Born at Bedford Downs Station in the East Kimberley, he worked as a stockman before being forced onto construction crews when Aboriginal pastoral workers were awarded equal wages in 1969. Close friends with pioneering East Kimberley artists Rover Thomas and Paddy Jaminji, Bedford quietly observed their progress while helping prepare their canvases.

It was only after these pioneers had died that Bedford took on the responsibility of painting. Beginning his first works in 1998, aged 75, he quickly became recognised as an innovator, drawing on a seemingly endless source of traditional lore and knowledge of significant sites. His paintings crafted idiosyncratic representations of country, evoking the rocky escarpments and rivers of the Kimberley while containing learned and poetical knowledge of the land and its creation stories. In 2006, he was honoured with a major retrospective at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art. His works now reside in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Musée du Quai Branly and Museum Ludwig.