Tag Archives: Papunya boards

Tjukurrtjanu: Reconstructing Papunya History

I missed forty years by about forty days and forty nights: that’s how long before the opening of Tjukurrtjanu: origins of Western Desert art at the National Gallery of Victoria that I left Australia to return to the United States … Continue reading

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Politics of the Secret

Rumors that Vivien Johnson was writing a history of painting at Papunya have been reaching my ears for a long time now.  When the publication of Johnson’s Lives of the Papunya Tula Painters was announced in 2008 by IAD Press, I … Continue reading

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Gone Troppo: Vultures in the Top End

The weather in Darwin is lovely this time of the year. The late autumn days are warm and bright, but not suffocatingly hot the way they can be at the start of the year; the humidity drops to an imperceptible … Continue reading

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Exhibition News: Icons of the Desert

Detail of Mystery Sand Mosaic, 1974, by Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi, courtesy of the estate of the artist, and reproduced by permission of Papunya Tula Artists through the Aboriginal Artists Agency, Sydney. The largest exhibition in the United States to date of … Continue reading

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Theft!

This just in from the ABC: ‘Priceless’ artworks stolen from NT museum Darwin Police are investigating the theft of seven Aboriginal paintings from the Northern Territory Museum and Art Gallery. Security staff at the museum alerted the police at 4:20am … Continue reading

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