"The Art of Sally Morgan is a celebration of Aboriginality, of spirituality, of life, of death, of pain, of strength - of survival."

Sally Morgan is one of Australia's most dynamic Aboriginal artists. Her work is bold, vibrant and provocative. The Art of Sally Morgan is the first publication exhibited in Australia and overseas to wide acclaim. It provides an invaluable record of the development of her art from 1986 to 1995, including a number of her black and white prints as well as her major works in acrylics and oils, and a biographical introduction by her sister.

Sally Morgan draws on this heritage to express her feelings for the land and its life forms and her experiences as an Aboriginal woman. Her work is imbued with the spirituality of her culture, its ways of representing the world and its traditional concern with the narrative - with telling the story. In the years since 1986, Sally has developed her use of dazzling colour and her personal iconography to achieve a distinctive voice in Australian art.

Sally Morgan was born in 1951 in Perth, Western Australia. Encouraged by her family, she drew voraciously as a child.

"I was obsessed with drawing. When I couldn't find paper and pencils, I would fish small pieces of charcoal from the fire and tear strips off the paperback tree in our yard, and draw on that. I drew in the sand, on the footpath, on the road, even on the walls when Mum wasn't lookingà" - Morgan.

However, her high school art teachers did not understand her art and criticised her bright, unconventional style. Discouraged, Sally abandoned her art. Years later, at a crucial time of personal discovery, she encountered and was inspired by an uncle - a highly respected artist working on the edge of the desert. Ashamed that she had so easily given up her artistic ambitions in high school, Sally turned to her art again and felt her old passion and confidence return.

Sally's striking art has achieved international acclaim through her exhibitions in the USA, the UK, India, Japan and Germany. She has been the recipient of a number of major commissions, including one to design a stamp in the United Nation's Human Rights stamp series for 1993, and has become one of the most recognised of Australia's many gifted Aboriginal artists.

Art has always been at the core of Aboriginal culture, embodying its spirituality and telling its story. In this century it has become a vital medium through which Aboriginal peoples record and reclaim their history, and in so doing define their own identity.

In 1987, Sally achieved enormous success as a writer as well as an artist with the publication of her first book, My Place, which told the moving story of her discovery of her Aboriginal ancestry. My Place went on to become both an Australian and an international success, selling over 400 000 copies.

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