“What is Aboriginal art ?”, a question raised by the exhibition ‘Le Point de Papunya’

Over the last thirty years Indigenous and non-Indigenous  art in Australia has been greatly influenced by the ground breaking Aboriginal Australian art movement which started with the dot paintings in the Central Desert community of  Papunya in the early 1970’s.

Art critic and journalist Nicholas Rothwell called the Papunya Tula painting movement ‘Australia’s only artistic revolution”. Cultural critic Paul Carter claimed the movement was “perhaps the greatest single cultural achievement of Australia’ s post white history”.

No Australian art movement has produced so much work so consistently for so long. Not only has the Aboriginal art movement established its own specialised local and global market but it has also generated the pursuit of specialist academic study and research.

This is pretty amazing for a community that comprises only 1.7% of Australia’s population.

With great foresight, influential Australian modern artist in the 1940’s, Margaret Preston, was one of the first people  to understand and support the importance of Aboriginal art. Preston thought that a  truly national Australian art could only be created through inspiration from Aboriginal art and its relation to land; all it needed was the ‘all seeing eye of the Western Artist to adapt it to the 20th century’.  What she did not expect was that this ‘indigenous art of Australia’ would be produced by Aboriginal people.

Last year Ian McLean edited a book called “How Aborigines invented the idea of Abstract Art ” (Power publications 2011). In essence the emergence of Aboriginal art coincided with the changing aesthetic of the 20th century when primitive art became popular among artists and collectors and figurative art gave way to formalism.

The Point de Papunya show includes a number of indigenous and non-indigenous artists including Lydia Balbal, Dacchi Dang, Janelle Evans, Jenny Fraser, Tania Mason, Alick Tipoti and Regina Wilson who use a variety of techniques and media far removed from the original iconic dot painting of the Papunya movement.  This show represents the new wave of artists  that are  redefining Australian identity and Aboriginality. It raises the question…is an artwork made by an Aboriginal Australian today necessarily Aboriginal art?

  Catherine Hickson, Assistant Curator

 

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