EVENT: Desert Country

Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery will be the first venue in a national tour to exhibit the Art Gallery of South Australia’s exhibition ‘Desert Country’, following its successful season in Adelaide.

‘Desert Country’ charts the evolution and diversity of Australia’s most influential art movement, revealing the extraordinary development of the Australian desert painting movement and the flourishing cross-cultural relationships between Aboriginal artists working in the desert regions of South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

Through its dynamic paintings, ‘Desert Country’ showcases the enormous diversity of desert art, including the ground-breaking canvases of the Papunya Tula and Western Desert Mob artists to the latest stunning works to emerge from the APY Lands.

Among the highlights are the profoundly powerful works by Pitjantjatjara artists, mapping the devastated lands that they were forced to vacate during the atomic bomb and rocket testing of the 1950s.

All the works on display in ‘Desert Country’ are drawn entirely from the extensive holdings of Aboriginal art from the Art Gallery of South Australia, and more than a third of the paintings are new acquisitions, being shown for the first time publicly.

Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery has an extensive public program of events to accompany ‘Desert Country’, including a special performance to celebrate NAIDOC Week in July— Austrian-based classical Mandelbrot Duo team up with Western Australian Indigenous performer Richard Walley for the premiere of a new work for violin, cello and didgeridoo especially commissioned for the UWA WINTERArts Festival 2011 and to coincide with NAIDOC week. Please see the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery events calendar for further details.