My Mother's Country by Samson Bonson

My Mother’s Country presents a focused body of work by Samson Bonson, bringing together a suite of expertly carved Mimih Spirits and Lorrkons (Hollow Logs), each animated by microscopically fine fields of dot work.

Across these works, Bonson demonstrates a remarkable command of both form and surface, producing sculptures that are at once technically refined and deeply connected to the cultural and spiritual frameworks of western Arnhem Land.

A Gurrgoni sculptor born in 1968, Bonson was taught in the late 1990s by Crusoe Kurddal, a leading figure in the production of Mimih Spirit carvings. This lineage is evident in the assured handling of his subjects, yet Bonson’s work is distinguished by an increasingly precise and controlled approach to surface. His characteristic pointillist application, dense, rhythmic and exacting, transforms the bodies of his figures into finely modulated fields, heightening both their physical presence and their sense of animation.

The Mimih spirits, with their attenuated forms, speak to a cosmology in which ancestral beings inhabit a world parallel to our own, while the Lorrkon, traditionally associated with mortuary practice, evoke ideas of passage, containment and continuity. In Bonson’s hands, these forms move beyond their ceremonial origins to become resolved sculptural objects, carrying cultural meaning while engaging a contemporary audience through their elegance and clarity of execution.

Bonson’s practice has been widely recognised. His work has been selected for the 25th, 26th and 29th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, and in 2007 a sculpture was acquired by the British Museum. International exhibitions include Dream Tracks: Aboriginal Art of Arnhem Land (2006) at the La Fontaine Centre of Contemporary Art in the Kingdom of Bahrain and a presentation at the Bargehouse Gallery, London. His work has been shown extensively in Australia at leading commercial galleries including Annandale Galleries, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Paul Johnstone Gallery, and Vivien Anderson Gallery, as well as internationally with Art Kelch, Freiburg and Harvey Arts Project, Ketchum.