Aboriginal and Oceanic Art at Sotheby's

On 28 May in Melbourne, Sotheby's Australia will present a double auction of fine Australian Aboriginal and Oceanic tribal art.  The first half of the presentation will showcase The Anthony and Beverly Knight Collection of Early Papunya Art - a stunning assemblage of twentieth-century Aboriginal painting - while the latter half will feature a more general array of beautiful traditional works from Australia and the Pacific.  

For more information, view the online catalogue.

Kaapa (Mbitjana) Tjampitjinpa, Corroboree and Body Decoration (1972)

Uta Uta Tjangala, Special Pintupi Travelling Ceremony (1972)

Barron River Native  -  Studios of Charles Henry Kerry and Henry King  -  Ca. 1886

Untitled  -  Artist unknown, ca. 1965

Information and images courtesy of Sotheby's

Aux sources de la peinture aborigène

The newest major exhibition at the Musée du Quai Branly is devoted to Australian Aboriginal art. Curated by Judith Ryan of The National Gallery of Victoria and Philippe Batty of the Victoria Museum in Melbourne, Aux sources de la peinture aborigène will be the first European retrospective of the painting movement born in Australia's central desert community of Papunya in the early 1970s. While proclaiming the absolutely contemporary character of this indigenous painting style, the exhibition also explores the movement's iconographic and spiritual sources through the presentation of traditional objects and photographs of ephemeral ritual paintings, most notably those taken by Baldwin Spencer.                                          

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Sans titre, Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi, 1972

Emu Dreaming, Long Jack Phillipus Tjakamarra, 1972

Men's ceremony (Wati Kujarra), Freddy West Tjakamarra, 1972 

Water Dreaming at Kalipinypa, Walter Tjampitjinpa, 1971

Big Pintupi Dreaming ceremony, Anatjari Tjakamarra, 1972

Decorated knives  -  Australian Aboriginal  -  ca. 1900

Information and images courtesy of the Musée du Quai Branly