Fabric of the desert revealed in new creative form

One of the most fascinating aspects of Emily Kngwarreye’s story is the fact that she sprang fully formed into the art world as an astonishing, and astonishingly marketable, painter in her old age. Only that fact isn’t true, as a remarkable exhibition in Melbourne [Victoria, Australia] clearly shows.

If Judith Ryan had been writing about any other subject, her opening catalogue essay for Across the Desert would have triggered considerable soul-searching and debate in the cultural world. But a triple layer of marginalisation - batik-making by Aboriginal women - puts it beyond even the specialist interest of the largely male cadre of critics and commentators who tend to cast Aboriginal art history in heroic terms.

Ryan, who is senior curator of indigenous art at the National Gallery of Victoria, blows up several myths by the casual mention of a few dates. Indigenous art in the central desert is supposed to have been invented single-handedly by the brilliant teacher Geoffrey Barden in the early 1970s; however, an art centre opened in the central desert, at Ernabella, fully 60 years ago in 1948. The great champion of Anangu art, Winifred Hilliard, worked there for 32 years: not that her name resonates in cultural history. Read Article

By Miriam Cosic