One of the most interesting art movements of modern times began when art teacher Geoffrey Bardon, working in the Papunya settlement 250 miles from Alice Springs in the Western desert of Australia, asked a group of children to paint their school house with the curious design motifs he had noticed. The youngsters asked their elders to do it. From those first five rudimentary school murals, Bardon supplied the Aboriginals with paints, brushes and canvases, spawning the creation of art that has attracted buyers around the world. The idea spread like wild yams in the bush. At first, only men were the painters of the sacred images being transferred from body and rock to two-dimensional surfaces. Today, men and women Aboriginal artists both contribute to this outpouring. This book covers the developments in each settlement as the world's oldest, continuous art evolved into an art that is comfortable on gallery walls everywhere because of its patterns and bold colors. The visuals, arcs, concentric circles, parallel lines point to eternal ideas in the Aboriginal culture, ideograms that bear the weight of 50,000 years and provide us with a new kind of seeing, writes Judith Ryan. (National Gallery of Victoria)

Mythscapes: Aboriginal Art of the Desert

Arts & Photography

Judith Ryan

Geoff Bardon

Painting

Natl Gallery of Victoria

The extraordinarily creative and varied output of artists of Northwestern Australia express different ideas and use different techniques but are united in having a visual 'voice' that reinforces the Aboriginal's rights to the land. From the northwest and central Kimberly are representations of the ethereal Wandjina spirit being, on rock surfaces and canvas, along with engraved and painted artifacts, boab nuts, pendants, glass spear points and bar buckets. From the Turkey Creek area are spiritual interpretations of the land while works from Fitzroy Crossing employ vibrant color and gestural brushwork. Balgo painting has filigree patterning depicting the spare desert as if viewed from the sky. Elsewhere, artists produce geometrics and palettes of ochre. (National Gallery of Victoria)

Images of Power: Aboriginal Art of the Kimberley

Kim Akerman

Religious

A German painter, print-maker, draughts-man and art theorist. His prints, including his woodcuts, engravings and etchings, made him famous throughout Europe.

Albrecht Durer: In the Collections of the National Gallery of Victoria

Zdanowicz, Irena

History & Criticism

Here is the best of Margaret Stone, one of the world's most admired botanical artists -- watercolors of flowers and plant life from the western and southeastern United States, England, South Africa, and Australia, including Tasmania. Her highly acclaimed art has a diagrammatic formality, purity of color and articulate clarity. Her commissions have included painting the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the Herbarium, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, the flora of Tasmania, the flora of Louisiana, for which she produced 250 of her most perfect drawings, as well as a magnificent portfolio for the 250th birthday of Thomas Jefferson for Monticello. (National Gallery of Victoria)

Beauty in Truth: The Botanical Art of Margaret Stones

Individual Artists

Beyond Belief: Modern Art and the Relgious Imagination

Crumlin, Rosemary

Art from around the world portrays various aspects of the unusual theme of the religious imagination in art. Among the 64 artists are Francis Bacon, Mark Rothko, Audrey Flack, Geroge Grosz, Freda Kahlo, Antonio Saura, Andy Warhol, Henri Matisse, George Dix, Emil Nolde, Jose Clemente Orozco, Pablo Picasso, Francesco Clemente and Cindy Sherman. Fifty collaborators from different countries helped in the creation of the exhibition which was the basis of this publication -- artists, academics, curators, gallery directors -- including Tom Wolfe, the author, Mark Taylor, Williams College professor, Evelyn Weiss, Museum Ludwig, Kohn, German, Deborah Haynes, Director of Women's Studies, Washington State University, among David Freedberg, National Gallery of Art. Works are shown one to a page and there are eight essays and dialogues. (National Gallery of Victoria)

Beyond Belief: Modern Art and the Religious Imagination

The great Francesco Goya was pivotal to the development of European art. His engagement with dreams and fantasy link him to the Romantic era while his skeptical view of society, his questioning of the strictures of the Church and State, reflect Enlightenment attitudes familiar to contemporary viewers. His humane and shocking portrayal and denunciation of war still evokes an understanding and immediate response. This publication looks at the motivations of his art, to shine the light of Reason on human relations, and explores his patrons, his career and the times in which he lived. (National Gallery of Victoria)

Reason and Folly: The Prints of Francisco Goya

Heckes, Frank

This colourful and informative publication has been released in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name, beginning at the National Gallery of Victoria in September 1998. It surveys the history of textile production across Aboriginal Australia and the Torres Strait Islands, in both rural and urban communities.

Raiki Wara: Long Cloth from Aboriginal Australia and the Torres Strait

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Ryan, Judith

Bennett, James

National Gallery Of Victoria

Healy, Robyn

Southcorp Limited

Antiques & Collectibles

Accompanies a first-time Australian exhibit of major pieces that seldom leave Norway. Includes works from his primary museums: Munch Museet, Oslo, National Gallery, Oslo and the Kunst-museum Bergen, Norway.

Edvard Munch: The Frieze Of Life

Gott, Ted

Cross, Elizabeth

Colour Power focuses mainly on the revolutionary decades 1984–2004, which issue from the genesis of the Western Desert art movement at Papunya in 1971–72, when senior men invented a new art form, which has had a 'big bang' effect on the evolution and acceptance of modern Indigenous art within the mainstream. In experimenting with acrylics the founding Papunya artists opened up a Pandora's box: once the bright colours had been let out there would be no turning back.

Colour Power: Aboriginal Art Post 1984

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