The Modern Aboriginal Art Movement
The movement began in the 1970's in a small called Papunya near Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.
Contemporary Aboriginal acrylic paintings once seen by western individuals coined the term ‘dot painting’. The style of painting arose from the Papunya art movement in the 1970s.
Papunya Tula artists artwork reflected their spiritual ceremonies. These ceremonies would include the soil to be smoothed over to act like a canvas. The contemporary artists use dark boards to represent the earth to create their artwork. Their artwork would contain sacred designs, often replicating the movements their ancestors upon earth. These artists involved in the movement changed how aboriginal art was seen in Australia and internationally.
The paint used for the artworks were naturally accruing colours of red, yellow, black and white produced from ochre, charcoal and pipe clay. Once the ritual paintings had been taken from the ground to canvas; circles, spirals, lines, dashes and dots, the visual language of the Western Desert Aboriginal People appeared like maps upon the canvas. Consequently representations of sacred objects were forbidden or concealed through the dotting technique.
Whether a concealer of deeper, spiritual meaning or simply symbols of fruits, rain or feathers the acrylic dot paintings of the Aboriginal People become increasingly complex and innovative artistically. Acrylic Aboriginal paintings are highly emotive incorporating an innovative balance of traditional and modern. The dot technique, whether as a concealer or a signifier offers a sense of movement and rhythm causing the flat canvas to sing, jump and dance with energy and life, much like the rituals which inspired them.
The movement became and still is today an expression of their culture and a major step forward for the Indigenous people of Australia.
'Inland Sea' by Aboriginal Artist Dorothy Napangardi ; © 2007 Central Art
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