Stunning patterns emerge from circles, dots, lines

Though the creation of art has been an essential part of Aboriginal spiritual and ceremonial practices for thousands of years (in order to mark territory or record history for example), it was largely expressed in transient form. Besides a few ceremonial objects and cave paintings, body and temporary ground paintings were much more common. Stories of the “Dreamtime,” which describe the time when according to Aboriginal belief the world was created, were usually painted in the desert sand and only lasted until a wind would blend them back into nature.

Even in New York, the initial introduction to Aboriginal art and culture did not occur until as recently as 1988 — when the exhibition “Dreaming: The Art of Aboriginal Australia” was held at the Asia Society. Included there was a small group of acrylic paintings from a government-established Aboriginal community in Central Australia called Papunya — representing an art movement which now has become the sole focus of a stunning survey at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery.

Fred Myers, Professor and Chair of Anthropology at NYU — who undertook his doctoral research around Papunya from 1973-75 when the movement was still in formation — explains that the exhibition can be considered a “local art history” of sorts. “One can see the formal development of the painting, the diversity of painters, and the crystallization of a visual language,” he notes.