Kintolai Gallery was established in 1999 and traded under the name of Art Lounge until the name changed occurred at the beginning of 2001.
Director, Erima Gallasch was born in Papua New Guinea with his mother being a Tolai woman and his father being an Australian man who worked in New Guinea for many years as a research scientist and teacher but with a personal passion for collecting the beautiful tribal art forms and documenting the associated ceremonies of the Oceanic region.
The family emigrated to Australia whilst Erima was still a young child and settled in Hahndorf in South Australia. He was fortunate to grow up in a house surrounded by art from around the world with a majority of works being art from Australian Aborigines, both in a traditional and contemporary form.
As a youth, Erima volunteered much of his time in helping to renovate the Hahndorf Academy and helped to prepare exhibitions for the newly formed Academy foundation, most notably were exhibitions of works by Rembrandt and renown Australian landscape artist, Hans Heysen.
In 1992 Tineriba Tribal Gallery was established by Erima's mother, Neriba Gallasch, to consolidate the families long interest in aboriginal and tribal art. In its formative years Erima worked for his mother in the gallery helping her to expose unknown indigenous and non-indigenous artists to the public alongside works by the masters of the contemporary aboriginal art movement.
In 1999 Erima opened Kintolai Gallery (Art Lounge) in the centre of Adelaide on Hindley Street, the red light district of the city. The first major exhibition was organised in conjunction with Tineriba Tribal Gallery, Warlayirti Artists and Warmun Art Centre of works by artists Eubena Nampitjin (Balgo, W.A.) and Lena Nyadbi (Warmun, W.A.) during the 2000 Adelaide Festival of Arts. This proved to be a highly successful and pivotal exhibition in the careers of both these now renown artists. Since then Kintolai Gallery has held many exciting exhibitions and is proud to have exposed many artists to the public and exposed the public to a varied menu of artworks from unknown to established artists.
Kintolai Gallery prides itself on being a selective dealer of artworks.
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