Focus on Australia

The Gallery is pleased to present a special program on Australian art, with particular emphasis on Australian aboriginal works. Accompanying lectures are listed under Special Events, and details of the associated festival of film and television on Indigenous Australians, titles Cultural Focus, Cultural Futures, are listed overleaf.

(1) The Utopia Body Paint Collection

These vibrant paintings by (mainly female) aboriginal artists from Utopia (an aboriginal property 150 miles north of Alice Springs) represent an adaptation of images from a living ceremonial tradition - the Dreaming - translated by the artists themselves from traditional surfaces, such as sand or the human body, to acrylic on linen. Artists from Utopia have gained an international reputation for their work in batik, painting and sculpture. This community-wide project was organized by Rodney Gooch of the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association. Its North American tour has been co-ordinated by Nina Felshin, and it is presented at the Dalhousie Art Gallery with financial assistance from The Canada Council Exhibition Assistance Program. 

(2) The Urban Aboriginal

"Urban aboriginal art" is identified as the work of city artists of whole or part aboriginal ancestry who draw on a combination of both aboriginal and European visual traditions, such as these works on paper by well-known Australian artists such as Sally Morgan, Bronwyn Bancroft and Lin Onus. The Gallery is grateful to Jan Weiss, of the Jan Weiss Gallery, New York, for selecting and lending these works from her collection. 

(3) An Eccentric Orbit: Video Art from Australia 

Digitized images and fascinating explorations in "cyberspace" dominate this survey of "outsider" video and electronic art produced between 1980 and 1994 by Australian artists who, according to Australian curator and video artist Peter Callas, reflect the sensibility of a nation plagued by doubts about what to make of its "placelessness", and who often seem more comfortable in the Virtual landscape than the real one. Organized and circulated by the Media Arts section of the American Federation of Arts.