Australian art is any art made in or about Australia, or by Australians overseas, from prehistoric times to the present. This includes Aboriginal, Colonial, Landscape, Atelier, early-twentieth-century painters, print makers, photographers, and sculptors influenced by European modernism, Contemporary art. The visual arts have a long history in Australia, with evidence of Aboriginal art dating back at least 30,000 years. Australia has produced many notable artists of both Western and Indigenous Australian schools, including the late-19th-century Heidelberg School plein air painters, the Antipodeans, the Central Australian Hermannsburg School watercolourists, the Western Desert Art Movement and coeval examples of well-known High modernism and Postmodern art.
Gabrielle Pizzi, born Gabrielle Wren, was an Australian art dealer who promoted Aboriginal art from the Western Desert from the early 1980s. She created the Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi in Melbourne in 1987.
Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri AO was an Australian painter, considered to be one of the most collected and renowned Australian Aboriginal artists. His paintings are held in galleries and collections in Australia and elsewhere, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Australia, the Kelton Foundation and the Royal Collection.
Dorothy Napangardi was a Warlpiri speaking contemporary Indigenous Australian artist born in the Tanami Desert and who worked in Alice Springs.
Papunya is a small Indigenous Australian community roughly 240 kilometres (150 mi) northwest of Alice Springs (Mparntwe) in the Northern Territory, Australia. It is known as an important centre for Contemporary Indigenous Australian art, in particular the style created by the Papunya Tula artists in the 1970s, referred to colloquially as dot painting. Its population in 2016 was 404.
Papunya Tula, registered as Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd, is an artist cooperative formed in 1972 in Papunya, Northern Territory, owned and operated by Aboriginal people from the Western Desert of Australia. The group is known for its innovative work with the Western Desert Art Movement, popularly referred to as "dot painting". Credited with bringing contemporary Aboriginal art to world attention, its artists inspired many other Australian Aboriginal artists and styles.
Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri, was one of the most important painters to emerge from the Western Desert.
Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri, was one of Australia's best-known artists of the Western Desert Art Movement, Papunya Tula.
Kumantje Jagamara, also known as Kumantje Nelson Jagamara, Michael Minjina Nelson Tjakamarra, Michael Nelson Tjakamarra and variations, was an Aboriginal Australian painter. He was one of the most significant proponents of the Western Desert art movement, an early style of contemporary Indigenous Australian art.
Adam Knight is an Australian art curator and dealer. He has operated seven commercial art galleries and is the owner of the Mitchelton Gallery of Aboriginal Art Located in Taungurung Country outside Nagambie in Victoria, Australia’s largest Aboriginal Art Gallery.
Makinti Napanangka was a Pintupi-speaking Indigenous Australian artist from Australia's Western Desert region. She was referred to posthumously as Kumentje. The term Kumentje was used instead of her personal name as it is customary among many indigenous communities not to refer to deceased people by their original given names for some time after their deaths. She lived in the communities of Haasts Bluff, Papunya, and later at Kintore, about 50 kilometres (31 mi) north-east of the Lake MacDonald region where she was born, on the border of the Northern Territory and Western Australia.
Doreen Reid Nakamarra was an Australian Aboriginal artist and painter. Reid was considered an important artist within the Western Desert cultural bloc. She was a leading painter at the Papunya Tula artist cooperative in Central Australia.
Kitty Pultara Napaljarri is an Anmatyerre-speaking Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region. Born at Napperby Station east of Yuendumu, Northern Territory, she worked on the station and first learned to paint there around 1986. Her work is held in the collections of the Art Gallery of South Australia and South Australian Museum.
Contemporary Indigenous Australian art is the modern art work produced by Indigenous Australians, that is, Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander people. It is generally regarded as beginning in 1971 with a painting movement that started at Papunya, northwest of Alice Springs, Northern Territory, involving Aboriginal artists such as Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri and Kaapa Tjampitjinpa, and facilitated by white Australian teacher and art worker Geoffrey Bardon. The movement spawned widespread interest across rural and remote Aboriginal Australia in creating art, while contemporary Indigenous art of a different nature also emerged in urban centres; together they have become central to Australian art. Indigenous art centres have fostered the emergence of the contemporary art movement, and as of 2010 were estimated to represent over 5000 artists, mostly in Australia's north and west.
Warlugulong is a 1977 acrylic on canvas painting by Indigenous Australian artist Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri. Owned for many years by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the work was sold by art dealer Hank Ebes on 24 July 2007, setting a record price for a contemporary Indigenous Australian art work bought at auction when it was purchased by the National Gallery of Australia for A$2.4 million. The painting illustrates the story of an ancestral being called Lungkata, together with eight other dreamings associated with localities about which Clifford Possum had traditional knowledge. It exemplifies a distinctive painting style developed by Papunya Tula artists in the 1970s, and blends representation of landscape with ceremonial iconography. Art critic Benjamin Genocchio describes it as "a work of real national significance [and] one of the most important 20th-century Australian paintings".
Vivien Joan Johnson is an Australian sociologist, writer on Indigenous Australian art, curator, teacher and former editor-in-chief of the Dictionary of Australian Artists Online. She is based in Sydney with frequent travel to Papunya where much of her work is centered. Johnson is considered to be a pioneer in interdisciplinary research as she combines anthropological, sociological, philosophical and art historical perspectives. She has also done extensive work on Indigenous cultural and intellectual property rights.
Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa was a contemporary Indigenous Australian artist of Anmatyerre, Warlpiri and Arrernte heritage. One of the earliest and most significant artists at Papunya in Australia's Northern Territory in the early 1970s, he was a founding member and inaugural chairman of the Papunya Tula artists company, and pivotal to the establishment of modern Indigenous Australian painting.
Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri is an Australian Aboriginal artist. He is one of central Australia's most well-known indigenous artists.
Thomas Tjapaltjarri is an Australian Aboriginal artist. He and his brothers Warlimpirrnga and Walala have become well known as the Tjapaltjarri Brothers. Tjapaltjarri and his family became known as the last group of Aborigines to come into contact with modern, European society. They came out of the desert in 1984, and became known as "the last nomads".
Ningura Napurrula was a Pintupi-speaking Indigenous Australian artist from the Western Desert, whose work was internationally acclaimed. Her works included a site-specific commission for the ceiling of the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, as well as appearing on an Australian postage stamp.
