After three years of successful touring around Australia a unique exhibition featuring collections of Aboriginal art on doors named, Unhinged: Yuendumu Doors enter the dreaming returns to the South Australian Museum. These doors were taken from a local school on the edge of the Tanami Desert, Northern Territory and painted by the Warlipiri people who live in the small district of Yuendumu.
The Warlpiri people began transferring their traditional ochre ground paintings to canvas, and then to the thirty doors of the Yuendumu School in 1983. Now the doors are unhinged; after twelve years’ exposure to sun, wind, dust and schoolchildren’s graffiti, the entire series of thirty Yuendumu Doors were acquired by the South Australian Museum.
Twelve of the best doors were then selected for a travelling exhibition that has been touring Australia for three years and included the Museum of Sydney, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and State Library of Queensland . These paintings are key pieces of contemporary Aboriginal art. Literally and metaphorically they are doors into the religious and social landscape of Warlpiri people representing 27 Dreamings.
The exhibition shows the transition of traditional Aboriginal art to contemporary Aboriginal contemporary Aboriginal acrylic ‘dot painting’, now icons of the Australian art movement.
This is a fascinating and unique exhibition giving visitors the opportunity to view traditional Aboriginal art not on bark or canvas, but on doors.
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