Joan (Eva) Nagomarra, Kukatja people, Western Australia, Wirrimanu (Balgo), Western Australia, Warlayirti Artists, born Old Balgo Mission, Western Australia 1953, Kukatja Ngurra, 2020, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 101.6 x 125.4 cm © Eva Nagomarra/Warlayirti Artists.
2021 marks the 40th anniversary of the Balgo art movement’s beginnings. It also marks the first time many of the earliest paintings from Balgo have ever been publicly displayed. Balgo is one of the most famous schools of Aboriginal art.
A tiny community on the fringe of the Kimberley and Great Sandy Desert in Western Australia, Balgo has long been revered for the wild colour and bold forms used by the painters who live there. Yet for all its visibility, Balgo art is a story with most of the early pages torn out.
In the early 1980s, spurred on by family painting at Papunya, Balgo people were keen to join the desert painting movement. Anthropologist Ronald Berndt commissioned a suite of paintings in 1981. So did the Catholic missionaries. A local mission cook, Warwick Nieass, supported the artists’ ambitions to build on these commissions with painting workshops in 1982. Yet the paintings created in these early contexts disappeared before they could become an exhibition; before they could become Balgo art. Rediscovered in 2019, after four decades in a shipping container, they have been conserved by Artlab, collected by the South Australian Museum, and are being displayed for the very first time.
The time has come to stitch these pages – flaking and faded and magnificent – back into the unfolding Balgo story. The early paintings will be displayed alongside new works by the Balgo artists; bright bookends to the first 40 years of Balgo art.
Artists
Charlie Gordon Tjupurrula (deceased), Donkeyman Lee Tjupurrula (deceased), Albert Nagomarra Tjakamarra (deceased), Joan (Eva) Nagomarra, Bruce Njamme Tjangala, Garry Njamme Tjangala, Pauline Sunfly Nangala, Fred Tjakamarra (deceased), Sunfly Tjamptijin (deceased), Arthur Tjapanangka (deceased), Alan Winderoo Tjakamarra (deceased) & Christine Yukenbarri Nakamarra
Kukatja people, Western Australia
Larry Lodi Tjupurrula (deceased)
Warlpiri people, Northern Territory
Patsy Mudgedell Nakamarra
Kukatja/Ngardi people, Western Australia
Vincent Nanala Tjapangarti Tjapaltjarri
Kukatja/Pintupi people, Western Australia
Jimmy Tchooga Tjapangarti
Warlpiri/Ngardi people, Western Australia
Helicopter Tjungurrayi
Kukatja/Manyjilyjarra people, Western Australia
Matthew Tjupurrula West
Luritja/Pintupi/Kukatja people, Western Australia/Northern Territory
Presented as part of Tarnanthi 2021.
SOURCES: South Australian Museum, Art Gallery of South Australia