Mossenson Art Foundation was established in 2010

by Dan and Dr. Diane Mossenson.

The objects of the Foundation are to:

  • Preserve, promote and record cultural heritage.
  • Promote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and craft.
  • Publish and support scholarly research of art practice in Australia.
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The Trustee for the Foundation is Mossenson Art Foundation Ltd (ACN: 144 819 296). The Foundation is a public fund with deductible gift recipient status which means gifts to the Mossenson Art Foundation Gift Fund are tax deductible to donors.

SIX : 2020

An art initiative for West Australian artists presented by Mossenson Art Foundation in conjunction with Mossenson Galleries

Publications

Ngarra: The Texta Drawings

Ngarra: The Texta Drawings serves as an important testimony to an exceptional artist. Additionally, it is a means of honouring and perpetuating Ngarra’s desire to record his extensive knowledge of law, geography and culture for future generations. If it were not for this publication, the valued heritage resource of a unique hunter-gatherer, footwalker of country and stockman would tragically be lost following his passing late in 2008.

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“What a portrait of the artist emerges from these images! Ngarra is by turns prophet, witness, student of nature and conceptualist. In their beguiling way, Shaw’s memoir sketch and catalogue notes, buttressed by his other writings and the supporting essays in these pages and elsewhere by Skerritt, Sprague and the contributor of the book’s introduction, Nick Tapper, combine to produce a matchless account of a senior traditional Aboriginal man. ”

Nicolas Rothwell

The Australian

“A rewarding read, Ngarra the texta drawings tells a story of an individual who was determined to carve a significant and unique life out of a period of volatile change for Indigenous Australians. Ngarra’s success resulted in an opening of new worlds and audiences to him, as he commented to Shaw about the vast difference between the “big city exhibitions” where the really proper sensible people want to know all about really bush blackfella like a me and his life as a ‘lonely bush blackfella’.”

Lucy Stranger

Artist Profile

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Meeyakba

Shane Pickett Meeyakba

is a publication that celebrates the life and work of the preeminent Nyoongar artist of his time, and one of the great painters of the Western Australian landscape. Exploring his career through his numerous phases of art-making, the book sets Pickett’s paintings against the history of Nyoongar country and the knowledge of the Balladong and Jdewat elders who informed his work.


Pickett’s Nyoongar name Meeyakba, or ‘soft light of the moon’, captures the gentle spirit of an artist who set a beacon for those who follow him. He developed an innovative visual language to capture the landscape and climate of the Southwest, showing the history and culture of his people in breathtaking and ever-changing images. He was a leader for Nyoongar artists and an advocate for their advancement, yet his modesty, humility and quiet receptiveness was the engine for singular achievement.

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“…as we look at works such as Through the Window of Dreaming or Travel Lines Across the Hunting Grounds and Waterways, we feel few other artists could have so powerfully articulated a modern, often painful visions withing the context of a vital tradition as Pickett. History is one thing, memory another. ”

Will Yeoman

Weekend West

“In one sense, Pickett’s late painting was the very definition of abstract art, working from the superficial, visible elements of the landscape towards more elemental ones ( the sky, waterholes, medicine grounds, the moon).”

Nick Tapper

Art Director

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