Hotter than the Desert: Australian Aboriginal Art, 2022

Hotter than the Desert: Australian Aboriginal Art, 2022

Jeffrey Moose Gallery is proud to announce our annual exhibition of paintings by indigenous artists from Yuendumu in Australia’s Central Desert. Receptions will be held on First Friday, August 5th and First Friday, September 2nd from 6 to 8 PM. Jeffrey Moose will deliver a short talk at the September event. A Facebook livestream will run from 5:20-5:40 on both dates for those unable to attend.

Every August, The Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair draws thousands from around the world. This year’s fair is the first since Australia re-opened and features more than 1500 artists represented by 76 art centers through out the country. Few communities are more important to the genre: Papunya, Yuendumu and Utopia led the way. Last year was the 50th Anniversary of the first Dot Paintings. Traditional ground paintings by the Yuendumu artists, known as Warlukurlangu (Home of the Fire Dreaming) made history in Paris in 1989, part of the international survey, “Magiciennes De La Terre.” At this sensational exhibit of Indigenous art from throughout the world, a group of men from Yuendemu packed tons of desert earth and crushed flowers from home, shaping the material into an enormous “Ground Painting” to honor the Yarla Jukurrpa, a creation story about the bush potato.

Several works by Warlukurlangu Artists are on display in The Seattle Art Museum’s third floor galleries. It was through the Kaplan/Levy Collection shown at SAM that Jeffrey Moose was connected to this remote desert art coop. In 2006, Jeffrey and his father and son visited Yuendumu, establishing a continuing and fruitful relationship.

Dot paintings are images rendered from an aerial perspective which use symbols to represent people, animals, plants, weather systems and other forms in telling ancient creation stories. In their original form, these stories are part of the Song Lines, complex sets of story-poems recited in rhythmic pattern that link sacred places across the Australian continent.