Desert Country. Aboriginal art in the Art Gallery of South Australia

Adelaida: Department of Education and Children’s Services. 2010. — 34 p.The exhibition Desert Country is drawn entirely from the extensive holdings of Aboriginal art in the Art Gallery of South Australia’s pioneering collection. It is the first exhibition to chart the evolution of the internationally acclaimed Australian desert painting movement. Spanning a period of over sixty years the exhibition demonstrates the creativity and energy of the remarkable contemporary artists from Australia’s desert regions.
Included in the exhibition are one hundred paintings by ninety-five artists that illustrate memories, ceremonies, country, and the relationships shared by the people who live in the vast desert areas. Mediums range from watercolour on paper, to natural ochre on canvas, to the bold and dynamic synthetic polymer works on canvas. State and territory borders do not exist for Aboriginal people – their boundaries are drawn according
to birthplace and their relationship to those places. The ancient stories that connect people to their country are what we see in the paintings. The variety of painting styles and techniques highlight the diversity and ever-evolving nature of cultural expression among Aboriginal people throughout Australia. In general, men were initially the main artists in most communities, with women working alongside them, but from the early 1990s women started painting in their own right.