Design and Art Australia Online

Mitch Dunnett Jnr was a painter, printer and photographer and a descendant of the of Wirangu people of South Australia and the Noongar of Western Australia. He was born in 1964 at Southern Cross in the Western Goldfields of Western Australia and grew up in Ceduna in South Australia. In a telephone conversation with the author in March 2009, his father Mitch Dunnett Snr said that his son left Ceduna in the 1980s and moved to Adelaide to finish his high school studies.
He studied for a while before finding himself running foul with the law, ending up in Adelaide Gaol. In 1988, whilst still an inmate he painted his seminal piece Take the Pressure Down which referenced the death in custody of fellow inmate Kingsley Dixon, a 19 year old Aboriginal man who was found dead in his cell at Adelaide Gaol in July 1987. The work was acquired by the South Australian Museum.
In the 1988 exhibition, A Changing Relationship: Aboriginal Themes in Australian Art c. 1938 – 1988 , curators Catherine De Lorenzo and Dinah Dysart included a photograph taken by Polly Sumner of Dunnett titled, Mitch Dunnett, Adelaide Jail, 1987 after he witnessed the death of Dixon.
In 1988, after release from prison Dunnett was given a residency at the Flinders University Art Museum. He also began working at Co-Media in Adelaide where he produced his offset lithographic posters, two of which, Survival in solidarity and Keeping our culture, telling our stories were acquired by the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Dunnett was included in Queensland Art Gallery’s Balance 1990 exhibition with his work Death of the Tasmanian Devil 1988 . This synthetic polymer paint on canvas painting depicts the moon as an aggressor strangling the life out of a Tasmanian Devil. “The moon”, he says, in his artist statement in the accompanying catalogue is “symbolising the White settlers causing the extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines. After all, the White men have now taken over the moon by landing on it.” When describing the animals depicted in this painting Dunnett says that working at Co-Media taught him to be “polite with animals” and to make them “look polite and kind and not violent”. The story of the 'Death of the Tasmanian Devil’ was a Dreaming story told to Dunnett by his father. In the story the moon and the devil fight spilling blood across the land. This blood becomes the ochres found around the West Coast of South Australia. Yellow ochre from the blood of the moon and red ochre from the blood of the devil.
Dunnett worked with Kerry Giles who also had an association with Flinders University Art Museum (where Giles had two residencies). Together they staged a joint photographic exhibition Pages of History at the South Australian Museum in April 1993.
In 1996 he enrolled at Tauondi Aboriginal Community College in Port Adelaide studying art under the tutelage of photographer, Nici Cumpston . This college began life in 1973 and was originally known as 'The Aboriginal Community College’. It has been located at many different premises but is now in Port Adelaide.
His works are in the collections of the Art Gallery of South Australia, Flinders University Art Museum, and the South Australian Museum.
Mitch Dunnett died in Adelaide in 1996 due to complications arising from renal failure.

Writers:

Allas, Tess

Date written:

2009

Last updated:

2011