Politics of the Secret

But now, at last, there is Once Upon a Time in Papunya (University of New South Wales Press, 2010). It is art history of the first water, an anthropological and sociological inquiry, a memoir of a research project, an investigation into ethics, and a rip-snorting, edge-of-your-seat good read.

Johnson has an unparalleled record in scholarship on Aboriginal art, and in particular the art of the Western Desert. In addition to the Lives, there was the ground-breaking reference work Aboriginal Artists of the Western Desert: a biographical dictionary (Craftsman House, 1994). Her scholarly works on The Art of Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri (1994) and Michael Jagamara Nelson (1997) remain the most exhaustive and authoritative monographs on individual artists of the movement ever published. There have been exhibition catalogs of substance, including Dreamings of the Desert: Aboriginal dot paintings of the Western Desert (AGSA, 1996), Copyrites: Aboriginal art in the age of reproductive technologies (Macquarie University, 1996), and Papunya Painting: out of the desert (NMA, 2007). Earlier there was Koori Art ’84 (Artspace, 1984), groundbreaking in its own way, and The Painted Dream: contemporary Aboriginal paintings from the Tim and Vivien Johnson Collection (Auckland City Art Gallery, 1990). The list goes on.