Ngarai Sianok

Just on the outskirts of the hill town of Bukittinggi in the Minangkabau highlands, lies this breathtaking canyon which the locals call Ngarai Sianok, or the Sianok Canyon.

Early morning light

The canyon is particularly beautiful in the early morning light when the first rays of the sun shine through the mist that covers this deep valley.

Mooi Indie

The style of this painting is called Mooi Indie, a style well developed during Dutch East Indies colonial times.

An naturalist painter

Wakidi studied painting since he was 10 and is well known for capturing the West Sumatra landscape through his paintings.

Patchwork design

The work is a patchwork of linoleum fragments of different designs, salvaged by the artist from old Canberra houses and cut into small rectangles, then reassembled in an animated and elegant composition.

Connecting to the land

The work also has a strong connection to landscape, evident in its horizontal format and the artist's juxtaposition of lino shards selected and placed to suggest land and sky.

Culture of Canberra

The work is both an emblem of the physical and cultural landscape of the Canberra region, as well as a hybrid of modernist art and industrial design.