Contemporary Indigenous Australian art

It is generally regarded as beginning in 1971 with a painting movement that started at Papunya, northwest of Alice Springs, Northern Territory, involving Aboriginal artists such as Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri and Kaapa Tjampitjinpa, and facilitated by white Australian teacher and art worker Geoffrey Bardon.

Leading Indigenous artists have had solo exhibitions at Australian and international galleries, while their work has been included in major collaborations such as the design of the Musée du quai Branly.

[3] In the 1930s, artists Rex Battarbee and John Gardner introduced watercolour painting to Albert Namatjira, an Indigenous man at Hermannsberg Mission, south-west of Alice Springs.

[6] Namatjira's style of work was adopted by other Indigenous artists in the region beginning with his close male relatives, and they became known as the Hermannsburg School[7] or as the Arrernte Watercolourists.

[5][9] While the initiatives at Hermannsburg and Ernabella were important antecedents, most sources trace the origins of contemporary Indigenous art, particularly acrylic painting, to Papunya, Northern Territory, in 1971.

At the same time, Kaapa Tjampitjinpa, a member of the community who worked with Bardon, won a regional art award at Alice Springs with his painting Gulgardi.

[citation needed] After being largely confined to Papunya in the 1970s, the painting movement developed rapidly in the 1980s,[13] spreading to Yuendumu, Lajamanu, Utopia and Haasts Bluff in the Northern Territory, and Balgo, Western Australia.

[26] The Aboriginal Art Association of Australia (AAAA), incorporated in January 1999, advocates for all industry participants, including artists, galleries, and dealers.

The patterns portrayed by central Australian artists, such as those from Papunya, originated as translations of traditional motifs marked out in sand, boards or incised into rock.

[31] The symbols used in designs may represent place, movement, or people and animals, while dot fields may indicate a range of phenomena such as sparks, clouds or rain.

[35] The APY Art Centre Collective is as of 2020[update] a group of ten Indigenous-owned and -governed enterprises which supports artists from across the Lands and helps to market their work.

As well as the APY centres, Maruku Arts from Uluru, Tjanpi Desert Weavers based in Alice Springs, and Ara Iritja Aboriginal Corporation bring the number up to ten.

[39] In north Queensland and the Torres Strait many communities continue to practice cultural artistic traditions along with voicing strong political and social messages in their work.

[40] These artists are frequently referred to as "urban" Indigenous artists, although the term is sometimes controversial,[41] and does not accurately describe the origins of some of these individuals, such as Bronwyn Bancroft who grew up in the town of Tenterfield, New South Wales,[42] Michael Riley who came from rural New South Wales near Dubbo and Moree,[43] or Lin Onus who spent time on his father's traditional country on the Murray River near Victoria's Barmah forest.

These and other Torres Strait artists have greatly expanded the forms of Indigenous art within Australia, bringing superb Melanesian carving skills as well as new stories and subject matter.

[49][50] Anthropologist Nicholas Thomas observed that contemporary Indigenous art practice was perhaps unique in how "wholly new media were adapted so rapidly to produce work of such palpable strength".

[15][38] For a decade before commencing the painting career that would make her famous, Emily Kngwarreye was creating batik designs that revealed her "prodigious original talent" and the modernity of her artistic vision.

[54] A wide range of textile art techniques, including dyeing and weaving, is particularly associated with Pukatja, South Australia (formerly known as Ernabella), but in the mid-2000s the community also developed a reputation for fine sgraffito ceramics.

[61] Nevertheless, painting remains a medium used by many 'urban' artists, such as Gordon Bennett, Fiona Foley, Trevor Nickolls, Lin Onus, Judy Watson, and Harry Wedge.

[62] The public recognition and exhibition of contemporary Indigenous art was initially very limited: for example, it was only a minor part of the collection of the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) when its building was opened in 1982.

[63] In 1988 the Aboriginal Memorial was unveiled at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra made from 200 hollow log coffins, which are similar to the type used for mortuary ceremonies in Arnhem Land.

[73] Internationally, Indigenous artists have represented Australia in the Venice Biennale, including Rover Thomas and Trevor Nickolls in 1990, and Emily Kngwarreye, Judy Watson and Yvonne Koolmatrie in 1997.

In mid-2022, the National Gallery Singapore opened a major exhibition, Ever Present: First Peoples Art of Australia, which is the most extensive show of its type to tour Asia.

[102] The Wynne Prize has been won by contemporary Indigenous artists on several occasions, including in 1999 by Gloria Petyarre with Leaves; in 2004 by George Tjungurrayi; and in 2008 by Joanne Currie Nalingu, with her painting The river is calm.

Indigenous art works were reproduced without artists' permission, including by the Reserve Bank of Australia when it used a David Malangi painting on the one-dollar note in 1966.

[127] Doubts about the provenance of Indigenous paintings, and about the prices paid for them, spawned media scrutiny around 2006,[128] an Australian parliamentary inquiry,[129] and were a factor limiting the growth in value of works.

[131] These pressures led in 2009 to the introduction of a commercial code of conduct, intended to establish "minimum standards of practice and fair dealing in the Indigenous visual arts industry".

[136] Despite concerns about supply and demand for paintings, the remoteness of many of the artists, and the poverty and health issues experienced in the communities, in 2007 it was estimated that the industry worth close to half a billion Australian dollars each year, and growing rapidly.

[143][144] Leading critic Robert Hughes saw it as "the last great art movement of the 20th century",[145] while poet Les Murray thought of it as "Australia's equivalent of jazz".

In mid-2022, the National Gallery Singapore opened a major exhibition, Ever Present: First Peoples Art of Australia, which is the most extensive show of its type to tour Asia.