From the Australian Desert:
Contemporary Aboriginal Painting
October 16, 2026 through March 14, 2027
Image: Michael Jagamara Nelson, Four Stories at Pikilyi, 1988, Synthetic polymer paint on canvas. 47 ½ × 71 ½ in. (120.6 × 181.6 cm). Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia. Gift of John W. Kluge, 1997. 1989.7011.005. © the artist’s estate and licensed by Aboriginal Artists Agency Ltd. Photograph by Tom Cogill.
Fifty years ago, a painting movement emerged at Papunya in Australia’s Central Desert. It arose with such force and conviction that one could be forgiven for thinking it had existed forever, as though etched from the earth by the slow passage of time. In fact, formed in the aftermath of colonization, the enduring art movement is as much a product of recent historical circumstances as the ancient traditions on which it draws.
Now widely recognized in global contemporary art, painting at Papunya began in 1971 when a small group of Aboriginal men in the community started to represent once-secret ancestral designs of ceremony and ritual, using acrylic paint on scraps of cardboard, linoleum, and Masonite. Their seemingly abstract paintings revealed living ancestral connections known as Tjukurrpa (ancestral stories), which fueled powerful artistic experiments with color, line, and space. The following year, in an act of unprecedented corporate sovereignty, the artists formed Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd., the first Aboriginal-owned arts enterprise in Australia. The company’s economic success has allowed generations of men and women artists to stay on their ancestral lands, and continues to provide vital opportunities for local community development.
Irriṯitja Kuwarri Tjungu celebrates fifty years of Papunya Tula Artists. It features over 120 paintings, including some of the most iconic works of Indigenous Australian art. Rather than being arranged chronologically, the paintings are displayed according to Indigenous principles of genealogy, place, and ancestral travels. In doing so, the show reveals the deep, ongoing relationship between Aboriginal artists, the places they paint, and Tjukurrpa, which exists in a constant state of past and present together—or, in Pintupi, irrititja kuwarri tjungu.
The exhibition is accompanied by an online resource and an illustrated publication, Irriṯitja Kuwarri Tjungu (Past and Present Together): Fifty Years of Papunya Tula Artists.
Exhibition organized by the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia in partnership with Papunya Tula Artists.
The local presentation is made possible in part by the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art's Museum Association and generous donors to the museum's endowment.
