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eX de Medici maintained her Canberra city tattooing business while working on the commissioned portrait of Midnight Oil for the National Portrait Gallery. In recognition of the band’s activism on environmental issues and land rights, de Medici used a scene of the Ranger uranium mine, situated in Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory, as a backdrop. The mountain in the background is Mount Brockman, a site of great cultural and spiritual significance for Kakadu’s traditional owners. For the individual portraits, de Medici worked from sketches based on photographs taken at gigs and at a studio session in Sydney. She did much of the drawing in the finished portrait using quills cut from the feathers of wedge-tailed eagles, and pigments obtained from the bark of mangrove trees of the Kakadu region. The band members’ necks are ‘embroidered’ with patterns from the wings of moths known to have existed in the area; while the title of the work quotes lyrics from Midnight Oil’s ‘Blue Sky Mine’ (1990), a song about environmental exploitation.
This drawing is one of ten preparatory studies for the Midnight Oil portrait that were acquired for the Gallery’s permanent collection. In 2002, the artist gifted to the Gallery the illustrated diary which documents the work’s creation.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Commissioned with funds from the Basil Bressler Bequest 2001
© eX de Medici
eX de Medici (age 42 in 2001)
Peter Garrett AM (age 48 in 2001)
Rob Hirst (age 46 in 2001)
Dwayne Hillman (age 43 in 2001)
Basil P. Bressler (48 portraits supported)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves: who we read, who we watch, who we listen to, who we cheer for, who we aspire to be, and who we'll never forget. The Companion is available to buy online and in the Portrait Gallery Store.
Sculptor Peter Schipperheyn talks about working with marble and his portrait of Peter Garrett.
Magda Keaney explores the symbolism in eX de Medici's portrait of Midnight Oil.