OBSERVER: Potter Museum of Art opens
The Potter Museum of Art, the flagship art museum of the University of Melbourne, has reopenedto the public, with the exhibition, 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art, coinciding with Reconciliation Week.
65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art celebrates the significance and brilliance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art created from time immemorial and throughout Australia’s colonial history and beyond into the 21st Century.
The artistic and design traditions that began 65,000 years ago and thrived despite the disasters that befell the first peoples after 1788 remain the distinctive and unique creations of this country.
Curated by Associate Provost and Distinguished Professor Marcia Langton , Senior Curator Judith Ryan, and Associate Curator Shanysa McConville – in consultation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and custodians of art traditions – the exhibition explores the very belated recognition of Indigenous art and its rise to prominence globally.
The enduring significance of Indigenous cultural and design traditions, knowledge and agency is revealed in the spectacular curation of works of art and cultural objects from across Australia.
Professor Langton said: “The ironic title of this exhibition refers to the belated and reluctant acceptance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art into the fine art canon by Australian curators, collectors, art critics and historians in the last quarter of the 20th century. 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art celebrates Indigenous art as it is increasingly recognised in galleries and collections around the world – as the greatest single revolution in Australian art.”
65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art includes rarely seen works of art and cultural objects from the University of Melbourne’s collections alongside 193 important loans from 77 public and private lenders from across the cultural regions of Australia and decades of history since first contact.
More than 400 works of art and 50 documents, photographs and other archival material are exhibited together to create a narrative of these Australian art movements.
The exhibition features six new commissions by leading contemporary Indigenous artists including Sandra Aitken, Lorraine Connelly-Northey, Julie Gough, Brett Leavy, Betty Muffler and Maringka Burton and Vicki West, and work by artists such as William Barak, Lin Onus, Yvonne Koolmatrie, Albert Namatjira, Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, Emily Kam Kngwarray, Trevor Nickolls, Destiny Deacon, Yhonnie Scarce, Rover Thomas, Nogirra Marawili, Wogu Munugurr, Minimini Numalkiyiya Mamarika and Ricky Maynard.
The Museum has undergone extensive redevelopment by Wood Marsh Architects and features an impressive new entrance on the University’s campus, along with new and improved spaces for the Museum’s leading collection-based learning programs made possible by the generous support of The Ian Potter Foundation and Lady Primrose Potter.
Contributed