The growth of contemporary Aboriginal art is a remarkable
story. While the greatest flowering of modern Aboriginal art can be
traced from the rise of the central desert art movement at Papunya,
the antecedents of Aboriginal art expression using modern materials
in a mixed cultural context can be identified much earlier.
We intend to provide a series of articles reviewing the emergence
of contemporary Aboriginal art. These articles will cover such
topics as Aboriginal artists of the nineteenth century, the
relationship of Aboriginal art in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s
to other Australian artists, the emergence of Albert
Namatjira and associated artists, growth in urban and political
art in the 1960s and 1970s - and of course the Papunya story
and developments since.
This section of our Web site looks not only at Aboriginal art
and artists, but also at the interaction of Aboriginal and non-indigenous
Australian art.
Our initial pages cover the following topics: