In 1971 a young Sydney art teacher, Geoffrey Bardon, was posted to the government settlement at Papunya in Central Australia. There he found more than a thousand Aboriginal people living in a state of dislocation and degradation. Bardon was not the first European to show interest in the traditional sand mosaics of these dispossessed people, nor the first to recognise them as evidence of a powerful, ancient culture, but his empathy with the artists and his patient encouragement won the confidence of the tribal elders. He ...
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In 1971 a young Sydney art teacher, Geoffrey Bardon, was posted to the government settlement at Papunya in Central Australia. There he found more than a thousand Aboriginal people living in a state of dislocation and degradation. Bardon was not the first European to show interest in the traditional sand mosaics of these dispossessed people, nor the first to recognise them as evidence of a powerful, ancient culture, but his empathy with the artists and his patient encouragement won the confidence of the tribal elders. He taught them to use paints, and thus encouraged a great surge of creativity. The Papunya Painting Movement is now one of the wonders of the modern art world. By the time Bardon left in mid-1972, the 'painting men' had formed their own company, Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd, with prodigious output, strong sales and great optimism. The artistic force that had been unleashed continues to this day. The painting movement set in motion at that time has now spread to other areas of Central Australia and has achieved high international acclaim. It has not only gone some way to restoring the cultural pride of a deeply religious people, but has also provided the rest of the world with a new way of seeing. Papunya-A Place Made After the Story presents, for the first time, a complete record of the artists and the works emanating from the Papunya Outpost. It is a first-hand account of the origins of the contemporary art movement in desert Australia, setting out Bardon's analysis and synthesis of all the archival records held by him of the beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement from 1971 to 1978, and provides a reconstruction of the day-to-day and spiritual life of the Western Desert peoples. Illustrated with over 600 paintings, 60 photographic portraits, and hundreds of explanatory diagrams and maps, it is an essential work of incomparable importance.
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Seller's Description:
F- in F- jacket. F-/F-. Folio. original black boards gilt (a trifle rubbed & marked) in dustwrapper (a trifle rubbed & nicked); pp. xxiv, 528 (last colophon), with illustrations. Very heavy item (3.6 kg), additional postage may be required for international and domestic delivery. No. 58 in the second numbered series of The Miegunyah Press. A near fine copy.
