Between the Desert and the Moon: Central and Western Desert Artists MAMA Education Resource

Contents

General: Between the Desert and the Moon Introduction

Syllabus connections: Between the Desert and the Moon Conceptual framework Years 7 – 12 Framing Between the Desert and the Moon Years 7 – 12 Between the Desert and the Moon: HSC Extended Response Between the Desert and the Moon: general strategies Years K - 6

About the Education Resource This education resource has been developed by the Murray Art Museum Albury in alignment with the NSW Visual Arts curriculum. The aim of this education resource is for students and their teachers to develop a further understanding of MAMA’s exhibition ‘Between the Desert and the Moon: Central and Western Desert Artists’.

Cover Image: (c. 19030 - 2009), , Untitled, 2002. synthetic polymer painting on canvas. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Michael Moon, 2013. © The Artist, licenced by Aboriginal Arts Agency Limited.

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Curriculum Links Stage 6

Preliminary course P1: explores the conventions of practice in artmaking • P2: explores the roles and relationships between the concepts of artist, artwork, world and • audience P3: identifies the frames as the basis of understanding expressive representation through • the making of art P4: investigates subject matter and forms as representations in artmaking • P5: investigates ways of developing coherence and layers of meaning in the making of art • P6: explores a range of material techniques in ways that support artistic intentions • P7: explores the conventions of practice in art criticism and art history • P8: explores the roles and relationships between concepts of artist, artwork, world and • audience through critical and historical investigations of art P9: identifies the frames as the basis of exploring different orientations to critical and • historical investigations of art P10: explores ways in which significant art histories, critical narratives and other • documentary accounts of the visual arts can be constructed

HSC course H1: initiates and organises artmaking practice that is sustained, reflective and adapted to suit particular conditions H2: applies their understanding of the relationships among the artist, artwork, world and • audience through the making of a body of work H3: demonstrates an understanding of the frames when working independently in the making of art H4: selects and develops subject matter and forms in particular ways as representations in • artmaking H5: demonstrates conceptual strength in the production of a body of work that exhibits coherence and may be interpreted in a range of ways H6: demonstrates technical accomplishment, refinement and sensitivity appropriate to the artistic intentions within a body of work H7: applies their understanding of practice in art criticism and art history • H8: applies their understanding of the relationships among the artist, artwork, world and • audience H9: demonstrates an understanding of how the frames provide for different orientations to • critical and historical investigations of art H10: constructs a body of significant art histories, critical narratives and other documentary accounts of representation in the visual arts

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General: Between the Desert and the Moon

Introduction

Between the Desert and the Moon: Central and Western Desert Artists is a collection gifted to MAMA by Robert Michael Moon (Michael Moon). Moon has been an avid collector for over 50 years of two- and three-dimensional European and Aboriginal art. During the 1970s – 1990s Moon collected work from the Western Desert, an area that borders the Northern Territory and Western .

The collection encompasses art from the late twentieth to early twenty-first century, and showcases the diversity of the Western Desert region. These varied painting movements are now established as an integral part of the modern history of the Aboriginal peoples of the desert, and of Australian art history.

The works are drawn from a number of communities and include works by major artists such as the recently deceased from the community of Amata in South Australia, Lucy Yukenberri from Balgo in Western Australia and Johnny Yungut Tjupurrurla from the Tula Artists cooperative in the Northern Territory.

Moon has donated works to national, state and regional collections. Through the Cultural Gift program, Moon donated 19 works to MAMA in 2013 and 16 works in 2015. This collection is now known as the Moon Gift, and will be on display at MAMA for 6 months commencing 4 November 2016.

Image: Collection hanging in Michael Moon’s home

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Syllabus connections: Between the Desert and the Moon

Conceptual framework Years 7 – 12

The conceptual framework provides a model for understanding the complex and intentional functional relationships that exist between the agencies in the artworld. The four agencies in the conceptual framework exist in the artworld as a network of relationships between the artist, the artwork, the world and the audience.

Image: Lucy YUKENBARRI NAPANANGKA (1934–2003), Kukatja/Wangkajunga, Yirlkilitja , 2002. synthetic polymer paint on linen. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Robert Michael Moon, 2013. © Lucy Yukenbarri Napanangka/Licensed by Viscopy, 2015.

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From Balgo Hills in Western Australia, Lucy Yukenbarri Napanangka is of the Kukatja peoples. Inspired by the land around her, much of her early works make reference to the creation stories of the Balgo Hills. Her style has come to be known for these stories and the inclusion of waterholes described by black masses, and areas of dark green and blue for soakwaters. 1 Created in the last year of her life, Yirlkilitja features the overlapping of dots that Yukenbarri Napanangka came to be known for in her later works, combined with the form and colour that drove her appeal in the art market.

Read the above information. Explain the links between the artist, the artwork and the world.

1 Warlayirti Artists, 2002, Certificate of Authenticity.

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Framing Between the Desert and the Moon Years 7 – 12

The frames (structural, subjective, cultural, postmodern) provide an interpretive tool or lens for understanding the layering of meaning, significance, value and belief in and about the visual arts.

Image: Johnny YUNGUT TJUPURRULA (c.1930), Pintupi, Untitled , 2003. synthetic polymer paint on canvas. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Robert Michael Moon, 2013. © The Artist, licensed by Aboriginal Arts Agency Limited

“A fascinating aspect of Tjupurrula’s unique painting style is that he uses one of two opposing palettes. Each painting begins along a primed red ground where the tracks of ancestral men’s journeys are outlined in solid black brushstrokes. It is at this point that his paintings take on one of two distinctly different tonal ranges. Vivid orange, red and yellow outcroppings are nestled amongst bold shapes of purple and white. His brushstrokes are meticulous, dabbing and dragging the paint, he works the paint into shapes that are at once ordered and chaotic. In complete contrast he creates

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works using soft muted white, yellow, pink and purple. By delicately scratching fine elusive marks, he painstakingly works up larger expanses of ground.” 2

Using the structural frame analyse Untitled, 2003. What techniques does Johnny Yungut Tjupurrula utilise to construct this emotive image?

Read the above quote. Discuss why you think Johnny Yungut Tjupurrula creates two distinctly different styles of work.

2 Nici Cumpston, Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, 2013

Between the Desert and the Moon: HSC Extended Response

Image: Tjunkiya NAPALTJARRI (c. 19030 - 2009), Pintupi, Untitled, 2002. synthetic polymer painting on canvas. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Michael Moon, 2013. © The Artist, licenced by Aboriginal Arts Agency Limited.

Tjunkiya Napaltjarri's striking paintings reveal forms as colour is scratched away from the surface, a method unique amongst Artists, and shared only by Johnny Yungut Tjupurrula. Tjunkiya began painting for Papunya Tula Artists in the late 1990s. Until 2004, Tjunkiya painted with her sister at the Papunya Tula Artists shed in Kintore but from 2004 until her death in 2009, she painted from her home: the widow's camp outside her "son" 's former residence. There have been a number of solo exhibitions of Tjunkiya's paintings and her work can be found in national and international collections including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Australia and the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris. 3

3 "Tjunkiya Napaltjarri". 2017. Utopia Art Sydney. http://www.utopiaartsydney.com.au/artworks.php?artistID=38-Tjunkiya-Napaltjarri.

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‘Meaning in artworks and understanding artists’ intentions will always be dependent on the cultures the artist came from.’ Discuss, making reference to artists and artworks within this education resource and that you have studied.

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Between the Desert and the Moon: general strategies Years K-6

Image: Rosie NANYUMA NAPURRURLA (1940), Kukatja, Laka , 2003. synthetic polymer paint on canvas. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Robert Michael Moon, 2013. © Rosie Nanyuma/Licensed by Viscopy, 2015

Rosie Nanyuma Napangati was born c.1940 in Kiwirrkurra country. Rosie's work depicts her Dreaming country in the form of symbols, which represents women and their activities and the area in which she grew up.

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Describe the artwork. What sorts of colours, lines, shapes and animals can you see in the artwork? Does the painting tell a story? What sort of story?

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