The Art of Transmission
April 2013
In the regional art centres of Central Australia, one does not usually expect to find a pair of French anthropologists.
On the banks of the Seine, only a few footsteps from the Eiffel Tower, a centre hosting aboriginal art also seems unlikely. Yet the two cultures are not worlds apart, and extraordinary women from both have connected through a shared passion for art and inquiry.
Françoise Dussart is a French professor of anthropology and women’s studies who has worked in Central Australia for more than 25 years. Dussart and Barbara Glowczewski are two women whose studies on desert art and Australia indigenous culture have helped elevate Aboriginal painting and sculpture to an international platform. Dussart has worked with Warlukurlangu Artists in the Northern Territory’s Yuendumu and Glowczewski with Warlayirti artists in Balgo Hills, Western Australia.
Gestuelles: The Art of Transmission By Aboriginal Desert Women currently on show at the Alliance Française Eildon Gallery, presents the fruits of a unique friendship between these Indigenous Australian craftsmen and French women. The Alliance Française has brought the exhibition to Melbourne after having travelled for the past year from Canberra to Sydney and Brisbane. Alongside the Australian exhibition a collection of significant Indigenous art titled Tjukurrtjanu: Origins of Western Desert Art (or Aux sources de la peinture Aborigène), was on display at Musée du Quai in central Paris.
The exhibition here in Melbourne shows significant works from young and emerging artists as well as that of elders and established painters. It also reflects on France’s role in developing communities of artists and raising global awareness of the creativity alive in remote areas of the Australian outback.
One colossal artwork by Elizabeth Nyumi, which is a highlight of this exhibition, was on display just last year in Hong Kong. Her work was taken to Asia by the International Development for Australian Indigenous Art (IDAIA), who have also curated Gestuelles with support from the Australian Embassy of France.
Senior female painter Judy Napangardi Watson has contributed large pieces executed with large, sprawling brushstrokes in waves of colour. Another artist, Dorothy Napangardi, has a much more minute technique, focussing on details often with a monochromatic palette. IDAIA have crafted an exhibition which explores the depth and complexity of aboriginal art – not at all restricted to one style, able to continue to develop with growing influences. Word from France is that Parisians can’t get enough.
Gestuelles: The Art of Transmission By Aboriginal Desert Women showing now until May 17 at Alliance Française Eildon Gallery, 51 Grey Street, St Kilda.
afmelbourne.com.au
Image:
1. Imelda GugaYukenbarri – Untitled, 2011, 120x80cm
2. Elizabeth Nyumi – Parwalla, 2012, 180x150cm
3. Judy Napangardi Watson – Mina Mina Dreaming, 2008, 91x91cm
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