Papunya: A Place Made After the Story

The Beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement

Geoffrey Bardon and James Bardon

The extensive and stunning publication of Geoffrey Bardon's first-hand records of the beginnings of the Western Desert painting movement.

Awards

2005 Queensland Premier's Non-Fiction Book Award

Opinion

'This book is a kind of Bible of Aboriginal Art. It is grandiose in scale, defining in its pictorial record, and rich in narrative momentum."
Roger Benjamin
The Age 29/1/05
The Sydney Morning Herald 12-13/02/05

A priceless record of discovery and creation
Michael Fitzgerald, Time Magazine 28/11/04

About this Title

In 1971, a hopeful, young art teacher drove the long, lonely road from Alice Springs to the Aboriginal outpost settlement at Papunya. His name was Geoffrey Bardon. Eighteen months later, he left Papunya, defeated by a hostile white authority. But his legacy was the beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement.

What started as an exercise to encourage the Aboriginal schoolchildren to record their sand patterns and games grew to involve, at the peak of creativity, as many as 30 tribal men and elders. With Bardon's encouragement, these men worked to preserve their traditional Dreamings and stories in paint. The artistic movement unleashed at Papunya spread over Central Australia and has since achieved international acclaim. The Western Desert Painting Movement has provided the rest of the world with new ways of seeing.

Papunya: A Place Made After the Story is a first-hand account of the artists and the works emanating from Papunya. Bardon's exquisitely recorded notes and drawings are here reproduced showing his extensive documentation of the early stages of the painting movement. This book features more than 500 paintings, drawings and photographs from Bardon's personal archive. Many of the images have never been seen before and many of the paintings are now lost. The publication of this material is an unprecedented achievement, and Bardon can now be seen as the catalyst he was for a powerfully modern expression of an ancient indigenous way of seeing the world.

'Against a background of early indifference and neglect, Papunya: A Place Made After the Story is not only the dazzling record of a unique spiritual legacy, but it embodies an extraordinary act of faith and foresight.'
Paul Carter, author of The Lie of the Land

Table of Contents

I. Personal Beginnings
1. The Beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement
2. The Structure and Meaning of the Paintings
3. Subject Matter and Meaning and the Importance of the Idea of Story
4. The Lives of the Painters
5. Afterword: At Papunya, 1990-1991

II. A Selected Catalogue
1. Archetypes and Hieroglyphs
2. The School and the School Murals
3. Water Dreamings
4. Travelling Dreamings
5. Fire, Spirit, Myth and Medicine Dreamings
6. Bush Tucker Stories
7. Women's Dreamings
8. Ritual Dance Dreamings
9. My Country (Homeland) Dreamings
10. The Children's Stories

About the Author

Geoffrey Robert Bardon was born in Sydney in 1940. He was educated at the University of Sydney, where he studied law for three years, and the National Art School, Sydney, where for four years he studied art education before graduating in 1966. He taught art at various New South Wales country high schools before taking up a posting to Papunya in the Northern Territory in 1971. He worked closely with the Aboriginal painters who became the founders of the Papunya Tula painting movement during 1971 to 1973, and devoted many years after this to documenting and promoting the Aboriginal art he so admired. He made three documentary films: The Richer Hours (1971), A Calendar of Dreamings (1976) and Mick and the Moon (1978). He has two previous publications: Aboriginal Art of the Western Desert (1979) and Papunya Tula: Art of the Western Desert (1991). Geoffrey Bardon was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1988 for service to the preservation and development of traditional Aboriginal art forms. He died in May 2003 before this book was published. He is survived by his wife Dorn and two sons, James and Michael.

James Bardon is the older brother of Geoffrey Bardon and after Geoffrey's death in 2003 he helped realise this, Geoffrey's last book. He is a practicing solicitor in New South Wales and is the author of the prize-winning novel Revolution by Night (1991). James Bardon has been associated with his brother and Western Desert art for many years; he was the producer of A Calendar of Dreamings and the co-writer of Mick and the Moon.