Arts d'australie - Stephane Jacob
About us
Amazed by Aboriginal art during a stay in Australia, Stéphane Jacob-Langevin founded one of the first art galleries specialising in Aboriginal and Western Australian art in Paris in 1996: Arts d'Australie - Stéphane Jacob. By setting up his gallery in a flat, Stéphane Jacob is considered a pioneer. In an intimate setting, he introduces art lovers to Aboriginal art by organising presentation evenings, thereby forging special relationships with his collectors. In 2022, Arts d'Australie - Stéphane Jacob decided to consolidate its exhibition programme by setting up in the Marais district.
Stéphane Jacob-Langevin contributes to the recognition of Aboriginal culture. As a recognised European expert in the field with decades of experience in the art market, Stéphane Jacob-Langevin works with various museums in Europe to develop their collections of Aboriginal art with hundreds of pieces, including the Musée des Confluences in Lyon, Les Abattoirs in Toulouse, the Musée d'Ethnographie de Genève in Switzerland and the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris.
Arts of Australia - Stéphane Jacob is deeply involved in defending the environment, a battle that is close to the hearts of Torres Strait Islander artists. In 2016, Stéphane Jacob-Langevin was appointed curator of a permanent exhibition entitled ‘Australia: Defending the Oceans at the Heart of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art’ at the Oceanographic Museum in Monaco; thanks to its success, thirteen other institutions invited the exhibition, including the UN headquarters in New York.
Stéphane Jacob-Langevin is the author of the reference work on Aboriginal arts published by Scala. He also publishes artists' monographs. For his services to Aboriginal arts and to Australia, Stéphane Jacob-Langevin was made an honorary member of the Order of Australia in 2018 - a distinction usually awarded to Australian citizens. He is a member of La Chambre des Experts Spécialisés en Objets d'Art et de Collection (C.N.E.S) and a member of the Comité Professionnel des Galeries d'Art.
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George Tjapaltjarri
Originally from Western Australia, here the artist celebrates the peregrinations accomplished in the Dreamtime by the ancestors of her clan: the Tingari Men. The Tingari are a group of spiritual beings who roamed vast tracts of the country, performing rituals and creating and shaping special sitesThey, accompanied by their wives and apprentices, roamed the Great Australian Desert founding sacred sites at each stage of a labyrinthine journey mapped in this work. In this work, Georges Tjapaltjarri evokes the ‘Malliera’, initiation ceremonies for young men involving Waru (fire sticks) represented by the red stripes across the canvasAs the events associated with the Tingari cycle are of a secret and sacred nature, no further details have been given.
Niah Juella McLeod
Niah Juella McLeod employs a visual symbolic language that is codified, organic and vibrant, forming the basis of her artistic expression. Through this unique visual vocabulary, she weaves narratives that blend personal memory and collective history, each of her works resonating with the imprint of the land, Aboriginal spiritual heritage and lived experience. In Bana Gugaa (rain on stringy bark), the artist depicts rain streaming down eucalyptus trunks, an image that is both poetic and sensory. The term Gugaa evokes both the rings of the wood, translated here as concentric circles, and the fibrous texture of stringy bark. By juxtaposing rain and bark on the same plane, Niah merges two natural elements in a meditative composition, where the surface becomes a meeting place for matter, movement and memory.
Jennifer Keeler-Milne
Drawing on the traditions of classical oil painting, Jennifer Keeler-Milne creates contemporary works of striking delicacy, where nature becomes a space for reflection and emotional resonance. In this painting, the artist depicts a branch of eucalyptus flowers, or gum blossoms, a plant native to Australia. These distinctive blooms, with their soft pink stamens, are symbols of resilience and renewal in Australian culture - flourishing in even the harshest landscapes and often regenerating after fire. Executed in oil on canvas, the work appears precisely realistic from a distance, yet up close reveals a soft, sfumato-like texture. Subtle layers of pigment and blurred contours capture the delicacy and tactile quality of the blossoms. Through this interplay of realism and atmosphere, Jennifer Keeler-Milne conveys both the fragility and luminous strength of the natural world, offering a poetic celebration of the Australian landscape.
Anthony White
Drawing on the region's long tradition of landscape painting, the artist here depicts a landscape at odds with itself. Rather than a landscape in the picturesque tradition, Anthony has moved the genre towards abstraction, reflecting the contemporary economic system and the overwhelming data concerning climate change. He draws on themes of the passing of the winds, the turning of the sun and moon, the movement of people around the world and the vital energy that surrounds us.
Evelyn Pultara
Evelyn Pultara, originally from the Utopia community in the Northern Territory, began painting in 1997. She initially focused on depicting more traditional motifs such as bush berries and awelye. Today, she paints almost exclusively bush yam, an essential food for the desert peoples who consider it a "dream." Like Emily Kame, Evelyn wanted to express, with this work, her joy at seeing the abundance of food. The bright colors represent spring, a symbol of renewal. This landscape can also be read as a star map, as Aboriginal art readily blends terrestrial and celestial planes, as well as different times and places in a synthetic perspective. This practice gives the works an eminently dreamlike and poetic dimension. In keeping with Aboriginal pictorial tradition, this work can be read both horizontally and vertically.
Abie Loy KEMARRE
Abie Loy is part of the new generation of artists from the Utopia community, deep in the Australian desert. She began painting in 1994 on the advice of her grandmother, the renowned Kathleen Petyarre, who guided her in her early works, inspired by the "dreams" of which she is the ritual guardian. In this work, she depicts the fragile and delicate bush plant: the sensitive plant. As soon as you touch this plant, it comes to life and retracts. Remarkable for its variation on the theme of dot painting, the impression of breathing it gives off, and the hypnotic character of the motifs animated by a simultaneously centrifugal and centripetal movement, this canvas itself demonstrates the high degree of awareness and aesthetic achievement that Abie Loy has achieved—proof of the high quality of desert painting and its inherent inventiveness.
Konstantina
Konstantina is a contemporary Aboriginal artist descended from the Gadigal people. Her works tell the true story of her people. The “Negative Space” series is an in-depth exploration of Konstantina’s Aboriginal identity, constituted and characterized by absence rather than presence. The paintings in this series are composed of diptychs. Like a shadow puppet, the plant silhouette of the species depicted is embodied by an assemblage of finely applied dotted lines or withdraws from its environment, leaving behind the imprint of its absence revealed by its dotted outlines. The work Negative Space: Barraba takes its name from a species of reed. Barraba had many uses in the Gadigal culture, including braiding reeds, making ropes for fishing nets, and creating jewelry. It is also a natural habitat for many sacred animals among the Gadigal, such as Garanga (the Gadigal word for pelican).
Abie Loy Kemarre
Abie Loy is part of the new generation of artists from the Utopia community, deep in the Australian desert. She began painting in 1994 on the advice of her grandmother, the renowned Kathleen Petyarre, who guided her in her early works, inspired by the "dreams" of which she is the ritual guardian. In this work, she depicts the fragile and delicate bush plant: the sensitive plant. As soon as you touch this plant, it comes to life and retracts. Remarkable for its variation on the theme of dot painting, the impression of breathing it gives off, and the hypnotic character of the motifs animated by a simultaneously centrifugal and centripetal movement, this canvas itself demonstrates the high degree of awareness and aesthetic achievement that Abie Loy has achieved—proof of the high quality of desert painting and its inherent inventiveness.
Abie Loy Kemarre
Abie Loy is part of the new generation of artists from the Utopia community, deep in the Australian desert. She began painting in 1994 on the advice of her grandmother, the renowned Kathleen Petyarre, who guided her in her early works, inspired by the "dreams" of which she is the ritual guardian. "Bush Leaves" was inspired by religious imperatives: this plant is linked to a sacred territory for which Abie Loy and her family are responsible. By depicting it, she demonstrates her ritual "ownership" of the site where the plant grows; she fulfills a duty of remembrance since it was her ancestors who created the place. The plant, which thrives in the summer, is also a symbol of fertility in a region with a generally arid climate. This painting bears witness to the reality of this fertility and thus ensures its future.
Kathleen Petyarre
Kathleen is one of the major artists of the contemporary Aboriginal art movement; she was one of the first Aboriginal artists to whom the prestigious Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney dedicated a solo exhibition in 2001. This work perfectly expresses the blend of aesthetic sense and sacred inspiration that is Aboriginal female painting from the large Australian desert communities. The artist's clan territory is presented here as if seen from the sky: this style, inspired by ground paintings traditionally created during religious ceremonies, is referred to as a "satellite view." The cross-shaped composition divides the canvas into four sections, each representing different periods of the Wild Lizard's wanderings. This painting is a true mystical cartography revealed before our eyes.
Konstantina
Konstantina, real name Kate Constantine, is a contemporary Aboriginal artist descended from the Gadigal people. Her work tells the true story of her people. She reimagines the traditions of her people's painters and offers a modern narrative that allows all Australians to better understand that Aboriginal people are an integral part of the fabric of Australia. The "Ken Done Aboriginal Series" is organized with very colorful palettes on which peaks of small white dots evoke the perspective of enchanted landscapes, taken from the Dreamtime. "This series explores my practice of contemporary Aboriginal fine art. It is also a nod to 1980s legend Ken Done, who has become one of Australia's most celebrated artists. His use of color and extensive documentation of Sydney (the land of my Gadigal ancestors) are a gift to anyone who knows this special place. The patterns in each of my works reference the typography of the landscape. These works are made to be dreamed of."
Abie Loy Kemarre
Originally from Utopia in the Central Desert, Abie Loy Kemarre represents here an “aerial” mental projection of his sacred territory associated with the “bush hen” Ancestor. In the Dreamtime, the mythical time of the creation of the World, this ancestor traveled through this territory to find seeds symbolized by the multiple dotted lines in a range of blues that dot the canvas and make it so vibrant. The light red and white circle in the center of the painting evokes both a watering hole where the ancestor drank and the ceremonial site around which ancestral stories related to the Dreaming of the bush hen, rituals reserved for women, are still celebrated today.
Jorna Newberry
Jorna Newberry, an Aboriginal artist from the Pitjantjatjara group, draws inspiration from the sacred lands of her ancestors and the stories of the Dreamtime. Trained by her uncle Tommy Watson, she adopts a more muted and symbolic palette, notably telling the story of the lizard Perentie. Here she paints her country of Irrunytju, in the Western Desert. She also represents the Walpa Tjukurpa - the Dreaming of the Wind, which refers to the country of her mother, Utantja, which is a large expanse of sacred land with hills and a rocky hole where Aboriginal people gathered to paint, dance, and for ceremonies. Her perfect mastery of "dot painting" reflects a deep spirituality and active cultural transmission.
News
Niah Juella McLeod Doonooch Mabra l Owl Eyes
Monographic publication to coincide with the exhibition "Niah Juella McLeod Doonooch Mabra l Owl Eyes - Dans le sillage de la chouette » Bilingual catalogue French/English Format 26 x 21 cm Paperback, 56 pages ISBN : 979-10-95931-03-4
Konstantina
Konstantina - exceptional exhibition currently at the gallery