The first U.S. exhibition devoted to early acrylic paintings by indigenous Australian artists opens at Grey Art Gallery on September 1, 2009. Icons of the Desert: Early Aboriginal Paintings from Papunya, organized by the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, at Cornell University, features approximately 50 paintings, including many rare and spectacular examples, created during the 1970s in the remote Australian indigenous settlement of Papunya. The exhibition remains on view through December 5, 2009.
Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi, Mystery Sand Mosaic, 1974. Pintupi Synthetic polymer paint on canvas board, 19 15/16 x 17 3/4 in. Collection of John and Barbara Wilkerson, New York
In 1971, at Papunya, a government-established Aboriginal community in Central Australia, a Sydney-based schoolteacher provided a group of men with the tools and the encouragement to paint. Known as “Papunya boards,” these works constituted the beginning of the Western Desert art movement, in which Indigenous Australian artists explore images and experiences with paint on permanent surfaces. With fewer than 600 in existence, these early boards enjoy a unique status within the history of Aboriginal art.
Exhibition curator Roger Benjamin, Research Professor in Art History at the University of Sydney, states, “The art on view in Icons of the Desert represents not only a major contribution to contemporary visual art and creativity, but also the ongoing vitality of an ancient culture. Indeed, the Papunya paintings are descendants of mark-making that dates to well over 10,000 years ago. Such is the achievement of the painters of Papunya, who adapted the rich meaning of their image-making to a new context, reasserting with pride and intelligence the world’s oldest continuous culture.”
Grey Art Gallery Director Lynn Gumpert adds, “One of the achievements of Icons of the Desert is the way that it helps to erase the often arbitrary boundary between art and anthropology. The Grey Art Gallery is thrilled to present these superb works of art. They simultaneously sharpen our visual sense and open our eyes to the vital culture and belief systems of indigenous Australians. We are honored to be working on the exhibition with art historian Roger Benjamin. In addition, it is particularly fitting that the exhibition ends its tour at NYU: Fred Myers, chair of the University’s world-renowned Anthropology Department and affiliated faculty member of Art History, has conducted research with Western Desert people for many years and lived at a Papunya outstation in the early 1970s, and is serving as a valued advisor to the presentation at the Grey.”
Icons of the Desert is the first exhibition to focus on the founding moment of the Western Desert movement, presenting some of the finest pieces from the period. Assembled from the Manhattan-based collection of John and Barbara Wilkerson, they have never before been exhibited as a group, and thus provide a unique opportunity for Americans to experience the breadth and variety of these early paintings. The exhibition will include important examples by such great names in the history of late twentieth-century Australian art as Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi, Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, and Mick Namararri Tjapaltjarri, among many others.
Australian Aboriginal art gives form to a worldview based on Tjukurrpa, or “the Dreaming,” a belief that creator ancestors shaped the land and formed the world, providing the essence of all living things, and laid out the moral code for human conduct. The compositions of the Papunya works, which derive from the traditional body painting, ceremonial objects, and temporary ground-paintings still being made today, were improvised and reworked to suit the new medium of acrylic on board. Unpredictable, quirky, innovative, and quite varied, early Papunya boards constitute a highly appealing body of work, reflecting their makers’ first attempts to inscribe the imaginings of ceremony, story, and song onto more permanent surfaces. Several works in the exhibition include imagery and depictions of ritual objects that would normally be viewed exclusively by initiated men within the community. However, key senior painters have granted special permission for American audiences to view these works.
“In these boards, it is possible to trace the invention of a visual language that later became more codified. They offer the fresh appeal of trial and error by artists seasoned in other media who were now applying their talents, for the first time, to new materials,” observes Fred Myers. “Since its inception nearly 40 years ago, the Aboriginal Australian acrylic painting movement has grown and flourished. Early paintings of this quality have not been seen in New York City since a small group was introduced to American audiences in Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia, shownat the Asia Society in 1988.”
For additional information on the paintings from Papunya and the exhibition, visit www.iconsofthedesert.com
Grey Art Gallery, New York University, 100 Washington Square East, New York, NY 10003 Tel: 212/998-6780, fax: 212/995 4024, E-mail: [email protected]
