Filling in the Dots

TONY WILSON currently lives and works in both Vietnam and Australia. His lineage is also a mix, from the Kaurna, Ngarrindjeri and Nurangga Nations in South Australia on his mother's side, and from Umbria and Puglia in Italy on his father's.

- TONY WILSON

Winner of the Don Dunstan Foundation Emerging Artist Prize in 2018 and other awards, Tony's work is now showing at REDSEA Gallery. We asked him a few questions.

Tell us a bit about your background and how you discovered your love for art and painting.

I am a multi-disciplinary Indigenous Australian artist based in South Australia and Southeast Asia. I have a diverse cultural heritage: Aboriginal heritage through my mother and Italian heritage through my father. From an early age, I discovered a love for illustrating people and landscapes, mostly with graphite and charcoal. After a period of disconnecting from my art practice, my passion to create returned with a yearning to explore a more abstract work that is heavily influenced by my Indigenous culture and storytelling style.

Most of your work uses the Aboriginal dot painting technique; what does this method mean to you?

The technique is a way of expressing my connection to my culture and is a form of storytelling, using symbols and patterns to convey meaning and messages. My personal style is a visual depiction of the invisible space between us and all things.