![]() ![]() ![]() In the 1960s these remaining groups were also affected by a long drought and began to drift toward places where they could obtain a reliable food and water supply. Initially, Ernabella (Presbyterian), Warburton and Mount Margaret (United Aborigines Mission) and Balgo (Jesuit) missions were focal points mainly for people living in their immediate areas.įor many people living further afield there was minimal contact with Europeans until the 1950s and 1960s when roads were built to support the joint British and Australian weapons testing program based in the South Australian desert. Reprisals for these attacks led to the murder of an unknown number of Aboriginal people.ĭuring the first half of the 20th century the Canning Stock Route, commissioned for surveying in 1906, cut through the countries of many Western Desert groups while religious missions began to spring up. Others were attacked by Aboriginal groups. ![]() Members of exploring parties famously perished in the area, most notably Alfred Gibson who travelled with Ernest Giles in 1874, and the gold seeker Harold Lasseter in 1921. During the late 19th and early 20th century occasional exploring and prospecting parties passed through the area. Western Desert people were among the last groups of Aboriginal people in Australia to have contact with Europeans. The exhibition also travelled to the National Art Museum of China. Many of the Museum's Papunya works had been rarely seen in Australia before they went on show in the 2010 exhibition Papunya Painting: Out of the Desert. Papunya Painting: Out of the Desert exhibition The use of less figurative works has been linked to attempts on the part of the artists to mask the sensitive and dangerous aspects of their work. The early Papunya paintings for example were seen in some circles as being too explicit in their reproduction of actual ceremonial objects and scenes. Western Desert art has often been seen as primarily abstract in its use of symbols as the dominant motif, but there has always been a figurative element. The subject matter for the most part remained the Tjukurrpa beings and the country through which they travelled. This shift is well captured in the Canning Stock Route collection. Since their humble beginnings at Papunya, the acrylic painting movement has expanded through the Western Desert and has undergone a series of shifts.īy the late 1990s the paintings were less formal and more free flowing, with the user of a wider pallete of colours. The early Papunya paintings were essentially a translation of a traditional form to a new medium. The National Museum of Australia's Papunya painting collection documents the first decade of Western Desert art and clearly demonstrates the role painting served in enabling groups like the Pintupi to return to their traditional homelands. ![]() The early Papunya works were almost entirely Tjukurrpa (Dreaming) paintings which documented creative acts of ancestral beings which wandered the landscape. The genesis of the Western Desert painting style was closely tied up with the 'back to Country' movement of the early 1970s. ![]()
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