SO FAR AWAY AND YET SO CLOSE TO ME


I had already been to see «The Sources of Aborigine Painting» a few weeks ago and had hoped to take my granddaughter. 

When she went through the little book I had purchased I could see at once that this was not for her. So we went to see «Animals can teach us a lot» 23/11. Swan was hoping for much more explanation about the dreamtime and the aboriginal paintings themselves. This was not the case.

So yesterday I went off with Laurent. The exhibition is a block buster.

About the exhibition
The exhibition presents for the first time in Europe a major artistic movement, born in 1971-1972 in the community of Papunya, at the heart of the central Australian desert.
By transposing to recycled wooden panels the motifs employed in ephemeral ritual paintings, the Aborigine artists of Papunya created an astonishingly inventive formal art, saturated with meaning. These works change the manner of understanding the territory and conceiving the history of Australian art.
With more than 160 canvases and almost 100 objects and photographs from the period, the exhibition presents the iconographical and spiritual sources of the Papunya movement and traces its development from the first panels to the large canvases of the early 1980s

 Some of the photographs I could download from Internet were easier to study and  see the work individually. Especially the shield, knives and the house where there is a mural painting.
Decorated knives 1900Decorated knives 1900

Shield - 1960 : natural wood
The honey art mural - 1971













Looking at 160 odd canvasses was not easy as most of the time you have to go to the beginning or the end of a series to see who, what, where and when they were created. There were very few descriptions about the individual stories. Providing you were ready to look at symbols and work out if it was an Emu, a kangaroo track, a water hole or a man....then the work, as beautiful as it is, is a little overwhelming and seemingly, repetitive. I think Laurent felt this too.....

Men's ceremony

Snake dream for children

 The sandhill country stood out on its own because of the colours.

Sandhill-country-west-of-Wilkinkarra,-Lake-Mackay-

One of her earliest trips to the centre with her father, they (my Mother and grandfather) were presented with  some original work, shields, boomerangs and paintings done on bark. They were given by aborigines who knew little about the "white man"- I am talking around the mid 1930’s. 


Different tools

Shield
When I was in Australia a few years ago,  I bought a painting by father and another by his son - the gallery owner told me that what I had chosen was not popular as not detailed - I then completed my collection in Paris with a painting bought at an auction. This too went for surprisingly little considering that large canvasses sold for anything between 15,000 and more euros. What do the aborigines get I wonder?
The son

and the sun....
The father


Commentaires

Lo a dit…
I agree with Maggie. It was very hard to see and understand what the different paintings were about (especially the numerous dreams) due to the lack of info and the distance between the work and the corresponding labels. It was also a little repetitive and an experienced guide would have been welcome. Having said that, I really enjoyed the exhibition and Professor Keane was a very good personal guide to have and I am thankful for her Australian knowledge. Merci Maggie!
15/12/12 12:38
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