Utopia:
ANCIENT CULTURES/NEW FORMS

16 October 1999 - 9 January 2000
Challenge Bank and Sue and ian Bernadt Galleries
Free admission

Contemporary art from the Central Australian Indigenous community of Utopia
The Holmes á Court Collection, Heytesbury/Art Gallery of Western Australia

Utopia: Ancient Cultures/New Forms explores the emergence and transition of contemporary art in the remote Central Australian community of Utopia. The exhibition features silk batiks by forty-eight artists from Utopia and twenty-five paintings by Emily Kame Kngwarreye.

The concourse of the Gallery is transformed into a sky scape of colour with over fifty-five silk batiks suspended from the ceiling in tiered layers.

From the early 1970s the Indigenous people who gathered in many Central Desert centres experimented with new forms of expression, often translating body and sand paintings onto boards and canvas. In Utopia this artistic and cultural innovation manifested itself in the traditional Javanese medium of batik.

The results were so impressive that a major project, 'A Picture Story', was launched with the aim of encouraging artists to use the batik technique to tell their own stories rather than simply to create decorative motifs.

Crossing all generations the artists represented in 'Utopia: Ancient Cultures/New Forms', created stunning silk batiks featuring plant forms and tracks of animals and ancestral beings relating to their Dreaming stories. Bold designs derived from Awelye (body paint) and abstracted forms were developed to create startling images of great beauty.

This exhibition pays particular attention to the community of Utopia out of which came the dynamic and powerful work of Emily Kame Kngwarreye.

Kngwarreye made a spectacular transition from batik to painting, her work representing not only a strong manifestation of Indigenous culture but a major innovation in Australian art which quickly gained international recognition.