Forty Years of Papunya Tula Artists - Current exhibit

Harvey Art Projects proudly presents a 40th anniversary USA exhibition from the founders of the Western Desert Art Movement.

The Papunya Tula Art movement began when a schoolteacher from Melbourne, Geoffrey Bardon, encouraged some of the men to paint a blank school wall. The mural sparked a tremendous interest in the community and soon many men started painting. In 1972, the artists successfully established their own company. The Papunya Tula painting style derives directly from the artists' knowledge of traditional body and sand painting associated with ceremony. To portray these dreamtime creation stories for the public, has required the removal of some sacred symbols and the careful monitoring of ancestral designs. The work of the Papunya Tula artists is highly regarded. The high standard of the work and its unmistakable and powerful style has resulted in the Papunya Tula artists being represented in most public galleries, major museums, institutions and many large private collections within Australia as well as overseas. The aim of the company is to promote individual artists, provide economic development for the communities to which they belong, and assist in the maintenance of a rich cultural heritage.

Barrku! Exhibit opening night photos

We had a great opening night at Harvey Art Projects in Ketchum featuring the beautiful works from Buku-Larrngay Mulka Artists.  Wukun Wanambi played Yolngul clapstick and sang while Randin Graves accompanied on the didgeridoo. The show is open through January. 

 

 

The Art of Cultural Surivial - Aboriginal Exhibition Comes to Sun Valley

by TONY EVANS, Express Staff Writer

Curator Julie Harvey stands beside a display of Mokoy Spirit figures from northeast Arnhem Land in Australia. According to cultural tradition, when the artist dies, these particular poles will never be made again. Photo by Willy

The value of modern art can be as much about the mystique of an individual as what the canvas holds. In today's market, reputation and a recognizable style can mean everything.

Indigenous artists are no different, but the significance of traditional designs can extend far beyond the limits of one artist's personality.

For centuries the indigenous Yolngul people of northeast Arnhem Land in Australia have connected with ancestral beings through song, dance and painting. Their artwork has been used to lay claim to a remote region of islands and seacoast not far from Indonesia.

This week, the Harvey Art Project Gallery at 391 First Ave. N. in Ketchum will host a multidisciplinary exhibition of artists, singers and musicians from Arnhem Land, where making art has become a matter of cultural survival.

"An artist inherits rights to a story when they are initiated," said curator Julie Harvey. "There are several layers of initiation, each with more knowledge and more information."

Harvey studied at the Adelaide School of Fine Art, specializing in Australian Aboriginal traditions. She and her husband, photographer Paul Exline, will visit Arnhem Land in May, after the temperature cools off.

"It's about 110 degrees there now," she said.

The Harvey Art Project will host "Barrku: Treasures From a Distant Land" from Dec. 29-30, featuring short films and a talk at the Community Library in Ketchum, and traditional ceremonies and music at the gallery.

Visiting artist Wukun Wanabi will tell stories about the Yolngu people. He will be joined by Buku Larrngay Mulka Art Center Manager Kade McDonald.

The Art Center is located in Yirrkala in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia. Arnhem Land has been occupied by indigenous people for tens of thousands of years and is where archeologists discovered the oldest-known stone axe, which scholars believe to be 35,500 years old.

"These are the oldest continual artistic traditions on earth," she said. "Some artists came out of the bush as late as 1983 totally naked, living fully as hunter-gatherers.

In the desert regions of Australia, Aboriginal people navigated on long walks using "song lines," which correlated landmarks, and "Dream-Time" stories with traditional songs and rhythms. Knowledgeable people could sing their way across hundreds of miles of the Australian outback, crossing ethnic and linguistic barriers en route to distant places.

Aboriginal Treasures

Artist, art and ceremony from Australia coming to valley

by JENNIFER LIEBRUM, Arts Editor, Mountain Express

 Nawurapu Wunungmurra, Mokoy Spirit Figures, natural ochers on carved softwood. Photo: Paul ExlineArt as a cultural exchange will be among the Christmas offerings next week as Harvey Art Projects Gallery presents "Barrku: Treasures From a Distant Land."

The gallery at 391 First Ave. N. in Ketchum is a dedicated Australian indigenous art space, one of a few in the United States. This will be the first-ever exhibit of art on bark from a remote art center in the tiny township of Yirrkala in northeast Arnhem Land in Australia.

"Barrku" has two meanings—far away and something of excellence.

This exhibit of barks, "mokoys" (spirit figures) and "larrikitj" (ceremonial poles) has been almost two years in preparation, and artist Wukun Wanambi and Harvey art adviser Kade MacDonald will be travelling from Australia for both the official opening and to host a community cultural events program that starts Thursday, Dec. 29, at the Community Library in Ketchum. 

Four short films will begin Thursday at 6 p.m., followed by comments by Wanambi and MacDonald, who elaborate on the art and culture of the Yolngu people.

During Friday's Gallery Walk, the exhibit will officially kick off with a traditional ceremony incorporating music and song by Wanambi at 6.30 p.m. at the gallery.

http://www.mtexpress.com/index2.php?ID=2005140029

ART & HEALTH IN THE DESERT

It has been 11 years since Pintupi people painted pictures and raised one million dollars at the Art Gallery of NSW. Their aim was to improve the lives of their family members forced to leave their country and receive dialysis in Alice Springs. They set up the Western Desert Nganampa Walytja Palyantjaku Tjutaku Aboriginal Corporation (WDNWPT) and changed the face of kidney disease in Kintore as we were able to get people home to live on country and with family.

http://www.aboriginalartnews.com.au/2011/12/art-health-in-the-desert.php

TJUKURRTJANU: ORIGINS OF WESTERN DESERT ART AT THE NGV

A collaboration between the NGV and Museum Victoria

In partnership with Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd            

A National Gallery of Victoria Touring Exhibition 

This important exhibition features 200 of the first paintings produced at Papunya in 1971 to 72 by the founding artists of the Western Desert art movement. These seminal works sparked the genesis of the Papunya Tula movement, now internationally recognised as one of the most important events in Australian art history.

The founding Papunya Tula artists drew on a rich tradition of iconographic signs and symbols to create these early works. The exhibition establishes a connection between the works of art themselves and their sources in ephemeral designs made for use in ceremony. The period from 1971 to 1972 was a critical turning point when the ancient visual language of the Western Desert was rendered permanent on sheets of composition board and thereby transformed into a rich new art form: artefact became art. Tjukurrtjanu includes paintings, shields, spear throwers, stone knives, historical photographs, headbands and body ornaments. 

 http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/exhibitions/tjukurrtjanu-origins-of-western-desert-art

RICH PRIZE GOES TO ARNHEM LAND ARTIST

Gunybi Ganambarr, a Yolngu artist from the tiny Arnhem Land town of Yirrkala, 700 km east of Darwin, won the $50,000 top prize in the $65,000 Western Australia Indigenous Art Awards lst night.

Selected from more than 170 national nominations, the 38-year-old Ganambarr won Australia's richest Aboriginal Art prize for his group of paintings and sculptures.

Yulparija artist Jan Billycan, from Bidydanga, south of Broome, won the $10,000 best WA artist award at the opening of the awards exhibition at the Art Gallery of WA. Their works are displayed with those of 14 other finalists as a centrepiece of the arts festival associated with CHOGM in October.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/wa/10034041/rich-prize-goes-to-arnhem-land-artist/

MAKINTI NAPANANGKA RECEIVES AM

Painter Makinti Napanangka has been posthumously named a Member of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday honours. The award recognises Napanangka as a respected community member, senior Pintupi cultural custodian and matriarch to her extended family. Foremost, she is identified as a highly esteemed artist and a leading figure in the emergence of women painters of the Western Desert art movement.

Papunya Tula Artists’ general manager Paul Sweeney reflects: “History will remember her as a seminal artist and one that elevated and improved, not just her own life, but that of her entire family and to a large extent her whole community.”

Jacqueline Nakamarra adds: “I am happy for my mother. I’m happy. When Napanangka painted she was laughing and smiling. Dancing and telling stories about the early days. I am happy for people to see and know her paintings and country. She painted stories about Lupul and the time when she was young. When she painted - telling the story for Lupul, she would laugh. She was happy and laughing when she was painting in Kintore at Papunya Tula. She worried about her granddaughters and grandsons. We can see all of the paintings and this [award] makes us feel happy and proud for her.”

http://www.artcollector.net.au/MakintiNapanangkareceivesAM

COLLECTING THE DOTS

Collecting the Dots  by Carly Berwick

ArtNews May 2010 Issue 

In a few decades, the seemingly abstract compositions of Australia's aboriginal artists have moved from body painting and sand mosaics to board to acrylics on canvas—and to the walls of major museums.

http://www.aboriginalartnews.com.au/2010/05/collecting-the-dots.php