Aboriginal Art
Over the last century many indigenous people of Australia have begun to create western style canvas paintings or works on paper based on traditional aboriginal motifs. These motifs generally derive from Tjukurpa, loosely translated as “Dreamtime” or “The Dreaming”. Dreamtime stories are creation myths featuring ancestral spirits specific to each of the numerous aboriginal tribes.
The beginnings of the Contemporary Aboriginal art movement can be traced back to Papunya, a community created by displaced aboriginal
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Aboriginal Art
Over the last century many indigenous people of Australia have begun to create western style canvas paintings or works on paper based on traditional aboriginal motifs. These motifs generally derive from Tjukurpa, loosely translated as “Dreamtime” or “The Dreaming”. Dreamtime stories are creation myths featuring ancestral spirits specific to each of the numerous aboriginal tribes.
The beginnings of the Contemporary Aboriginal art movement can be traced back to Papunya, a community created by displaced aboriginal tribes-people in northwestern Australia. There, in the early 1970s, an art teacher named Geoffrey Bardon encouraged children and then older men to record their traditional sand patterns in paint. He began by organizing the men to paint a wall of his classroom in the Honey Ant Dreamtime motif. Papunya soon developed into a thriving artists’ collective called Papunya Tula, which included early artists like Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Charlie Tarawa Tjungurrayi, and Old Mick Tjakamarra; they became renowned for their “dot paintings” and provided the inspiration for the development of many other such communities across Australia.
The works are graphic and symbolic, made up of lines and dots. Because of their religious origins there is a proscribed format, specific meanings, and strict protocol in place for their creation, though today artists adhere to these guidelines to varying degrees. In order to emulate the look of traditional mineral pigments, many artists, like Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri, use a limited palette made up of black, white, red and shades of brown, but others, like Boxer Milner Tjampitjin, embrace new pigment technology and employ bright, vibrant, synthetic colors. (hide)
Examples of Aboriginal Art at Auction
Artists Associated with Aboriginal Art — 58 artists:
