Browse the chronological list of past exhibitions at the Saint 直播自慰视频 University Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCRA), or search for a specific exhibition. Click 鈥淰iew鈥 for more information about an exhibition. If you need further information about an exhibition, please contact us.
Utopia Body Paint Collection and Australian Aboriginal Art from St. 直播自慰视频 Collections
April 4, 1997 to July 31, 1997
A vigorous cultural revival is evident today throughout Aboriginal communities in Australia. Artists at Utopia -- a tract of Aboriginal freehold land in the central desert of Australia -- have produced some of the most vital, exuberant, and distinctive imagery of the contemporary Aboriginal art movement. Led initially by the women, contemporary art practice at Utopia began via the medium of batik in the late 1970s. A gradual revival of the traditional cycles of cultural renewal along with the advent of acrylic painting in other parts of the desert resulted in a flowering of works by Utopia artists in the late 1980s.
Utopia is the name given to the tribal lands of the Anmatyerre and Alyewarreye people. Situated 180 miles north of Alice Springs, in the very center of Australia, it is a desert land -- yet it has nourished its people and their traditional art for thousands of years. Australian tribal aborigines have survived because of their intimate kinship, knowledge and reverence for their land and for its creators, their ancestors who moved across the land and formed it in the dawn of time, known to them as The Dreaming. For the aborigine every aspect of the land is filled with the meaning and significance it had at creation: the ancestors who formed the land are still present within it.
Each individual is entrusted with his or her own particular Dreaming鈥攊t may be an animal, a piece of vegetation, a rocky outcrop or other natural feature鈥攁nd charged with responsibility for the land and its proper management. Part of that responsibility is discharged in ritual ceremonies of song and dance. Women play a prominent role in these ceremonies, decorating and painting their bodies with images of their own Dreaming to draw the connection between ceremony and land even more tightly. Utopia artists also might make their paintings on the ground, using the natural colors of the sand and the earth.
In 1990 Rodney Gooch, a visionary arts advisor, initiated a community-wide project. The Utopia communities were invited to transfer their body marking to oval-shaped canvas supports which evoke objects familiar to the artists, such as the shield, the dancing board and the churinga (a sacred object of stone or wood on which one's Dreaming is incised or painted). This collection of 77 canvases鈥攖he Utopia Body Paint Collection鈥攄emonstrates the extraordinary adaptability of contemporary aboriginal artists to transfer ancient traditions of image making to new media without losing the power of the images or compromising their ritual significance. Over the past 15 years the artists of Utopia, in common with other tribal peoples of central Australia, have been introduced to a variety of new media from acrylic paint and canvas, to batik, wood block printing and carving. MOCRA is pleased to present these works in St. 直播自慰视频, a city which has enthusiastically embraced the art of contemporary Australia.
Artists in the exhibition include:
Ada Bird | Eileen Bird | June Bird | Ronnie Bird | Engarlaka | Janet Forrester | Rhonda Holmes | Paddy Jungala | Bluey Jupurrula | Ada Kemarre | Ally Kemarre | Edie Kemarre | Elizabeth Kemarre | Elsie Kemarre | Gaily Kemarre | Gladdy Kemarre | Julie Kemarre | Kathleen Kemarre | Mary Kemarre | Patsy Kemarre | Queenie Kemarre | Valerie Kemarre | Gracy Kngale | Glory Kngale | Paddy Kngale | Polly Kngale | Audrey Kngwarreye | Barbara Kngwarreye | David Morton Kngwarreye | Eileen Kngwarreye | Emily Kame Kngwarreye | Hazel Kngwarreye | Janis Kngwarreye | Joy Kngwarreye | Katy Kngwarreye | Kwementway Kngwarreye | Lenny Joans Kngwarreye | Lilly Kngwarreye | Lucky Kngwarreye | Marilyn Brown Kngwarreye | Maureen Kngwarreye | Nora Kngwarreye | Ruby Kngwarreye | Sarah Kngwarreye | Lucy Kunoth | Bessie Liddle | Motor Car Jimmy | Annie Mpetyane | Lyndsay Bird Mpetyane | May Mpetyane | Myrtle Mpetyane | Ronnie Price Mpetyane | Eunice Napangardi | Vicki Dixon Naparula | Polly Ngale | Eileen Nungala | Elsie Panunga | Ken Tilmouth Panunga | Margaret Price Panunga | Ada Bird Petyarre | Anna Petyarre | Annie Petyarre | Billy Petyarre | Dolly Petyarre | Gloria Tamerre Petyarre | Hilda Bird Petyarre | Janie Petyarre | Jessie Petyarre | Joy Petyarre | Kathleen Petyarre | Katy Petyarre | Mary Rumble Petyarre | Mavis Holmes Petyarre | May Baily Petyarre | Myrtle Petyarre | Nancy Petyarre | Nora Petyarre | Pansy Petyarre | Pauline Petyarre | Rosemary Petyarre | Suzy Petyarre | Violet Petyarre | Wendy Petyarre | Michael Possum | Michael Japangardi Poulson | Mavis Pununga | Greeny Purvis | Julie Purvis | Angelina Pwerle | Lena Pwerle | Lucy Pwerle | Mary Pwerle | Wally Pwerle | Lily Sandover | Betty Skinner | Ronnie Tjampitjinpa | Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri
MOCRA thanks the Ladue Investment Partnership, Inc., of St. 直播自慰视频, MO, for making the Utopia Body Paint Collection available for exhibition. MOCRA is grateful also for the generous loans of art to this exhibition from other St. 直播自慰视频 collections. Acknowledgment is made to Nina Felshin, Independent Curator, New York, for tour coordination for the Collection.
Special acknowledgment is made to Mary Reid Brunstrom, Director, Austral Galllery鈥揂ustralian Contemporary Art, St. 直播自慰视频, MO. This exhibition was generously assisted by the Embassy of Australia, Washington, D.C.
above:
Installation view of Utopia Body Paint Collection and Australian Aboriginal Art from St. 直播自慰视频 Collections at MOCRA, 1997. Photo by Jeffrey Vaughn.
Related programming
Creativity as Ancestral Mind: Living with the Ancestors
Exhibition |
---|
Bernard Maisner: The Hourglass and the Spiral |
Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre |
Erika Diettes: Sudarios |
Regina DeLuise: Vast Bhutan 鈥 Images from the Phenomenal World |
Calligraphic Art of Salma Arastu |
Thresholds: MOCRA at 20 - Part Two, The Second Decade |
Rebecca Niederlander: Axis Mundi |
Jordan Eagles: BLOOD / SPIRIT |
Thresholds: MOCRA at 20 - Part One, The First Decade |
Archie Granot: The Papercut Haggadah |
A Tribute to Frederick J. Brown |
Patrick Graham: Thirty Years 鈥 The Silence Becomes the Painting |
Adrian Kellard: The Learned Art of Compassion |
Good Friday: The Suffering Christ in Contemporary Art |
James Rosen: The Artist and the Capable Observer |
MOCRA at Fifteen: Good Friday |
Michael Byron: Cosmic Tears |
Miao Xiaochun: The Last Judgment in Cyberspace |
MOCRA at Fifteen: Pursuit of the Spirit |
Oskar Fischinger: Movement and Spirit |
The Celluloid Bible: Marketing Films Inspired by Scripture |
Arshile Gorky: The Early Years 鈥 Drawings and Paintings, 1927鈥1937 |
Andy Warhol: Silver Clouds |
Junko Chodos: The Breath of Consciousness |
DoDo Jin Ming: Land and Sea |
Rito, Espejo y Ojo / Ritual, Mirror and Eye: Photography by Luis Gonz谩lez-Palma, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, and Pablo Soria |
Radiant Forms in Contemporary Sacred Architecture: Richard Meier and Steven Holl |
Daniel Ramirez: Twenty Contemplations on the Infant Jesus, an Homage to Oliver Messiaen |
Avoda: Objects of the Spirit 鈥 Ceremonial Art by Tobi Kahn |
Tony Hooker: The Greater Good 鈥 An Artist's Contemporary View of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study |
Andy Warhol: Silver Clouds, an encore presentation |
Andy Warhol's Silver Clouds: A Fortieth Anniversary Celebration |
Lewis deSoto: Paranirvana |
Robert Farber: A Retrospective, 1985鈥1995 |
Bernard Maisner: Entrance to the Scriptorium |
Tobi Kahn: Metamorphoses |
MOCRA: The First Five Years |
Steven Heilmer: Pietre Sante | Holy Stones |
Utopia Body Paint Collection and Australian Aboriginal Art from St. 直播自慰视频 Collections |
Manfred Stumpf: Enter Jerusalem |
Frederick J. Brown: The Life of Christ Altarpiece |
Edward Boccia: Eye of the Painter |
Consecrations Revisited |
Keith Haring: Altarpiece 鈥 The Life of Christ |
Ian Friend: The Edge of Belief 鈥 paintings, sculpture, and works on paper, 1980鈥1994 |
Eleanor Dickinson: A Retrospective |
Post-Minimalism and the Spiritual: Four Chicago Artists |
Consecrations: The Spiritual in Art in the Time of AIDS |
Sanctuaries: Recovering the Holy in Contemporary Art, Part One |
Body and Soul: The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater |
Transformations: Highlights from the MOCRA Collection |
Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre |
Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre |
Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre |
Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre |
Visible Conservation |
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection |
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection |
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection: The Romero Cross |
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection |
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection |
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection |
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection |
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection |
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection |
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection |
Sanctuaries: Recovering the Holy in Contemporary Art, Part Two 鈥 Three Major Installations |
Beyond Words: Three Contemporary Artists and the Manuscript Tradition |
MOCRA: 25 |
Gary Logan: Elements |
Gratitude |
Surface to Source |
Quiet Isn't Always Peace |
Tom Kiefer: Pertenencias / Belongings |
Double Vision: Art from Jesuit University Collections |
Lesley Dill: Dream World of the Forest |
Jordan Eagles: VIRAL\VALUE |
This Road Is the Heart Opening: Selections from the MOCRA Collection |
Vicente Telles and Brandon Maldonado: Cuentos Nuevomexicanos |
Open Hands: Crafting the Spiritual |
Selections from the MOCRA Collection |