In the Beginning: Paintings by Senior Artists of the Spinifex Arts Project

In the Beginning: Paintings by Senior Artists of the Spinifex Arts Project presents the work of internationally renowned artists from the Spinifex Arts Project, a collective of Pitjantjatjara men and women in Tjuntjuntjara, 800 miles east of Perth in the Great Victoria Desert, Western Australia. Spinifex Arts Project began in 1997 when the artists realized that painting would be an instrumental tool in lobbying the Western Australian government to recognize their ongoing connection to their sacred Country so they could return to their homelands.

Senior Spinifex artists were displaced from their homelands when the British government was performing atomic bomb and rocket testing at Maralinga in the northwest of South Australia in the 1950s and 1960s. The artists created large-scale, collaborative paintings-powerfully citing their Tjukurpa (ancestral stories and beliefs) and enduring connections to their land-and used these paintings as evidence in what became the first successful Native Title claim in Western Australia, with the Federal Court awarding Native Title to the Spinifex people in 2000. Known for their collaborative canvases, Spinifex artists also developed innovative individual artistic practices.

On view is a collection of bold, dynamic paintings created by Spinifex artists over the last twenty years, many of which are drawn from a recent gift by Greg Castillo and Gary Brown, alongside a collaborative canvas on loan from the Fondation Opale, Switzerland. Kluge-Ruhe curatorial fellow Katina Davidson (Kullilli/Yuggera) has curated the exhibition in consultation with the artists and the art center due to the deeply sensitive cultural knowledge contained within the paintings.