Heide Museum of Modern Art

Mythology & Reality

Mythology & Reality: Contemporary Aboriginal Desert Art from the Gabrielle Pizzi Collection

presented by Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi

Until 10 January 2007

Australian Embassy, Paris, France

Following its success at Heide Museum of Modern Art in 2004 – 2005, the exhibition Mythology and Reality: Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Desert Art presented by Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi opened in Paris on 23 June 2006, marking the culmination of a series of exhibitions at the Australian Embassy in France to promote awareness of Australian Indigenous art in France and throughout Europe.

Over twenty years, the late Melbourne gallery owner, Gabrielle Pizzi, assembled an extraordinary collection of works by Aboriginal artists. Mythology & Reality showcases paintings from some of the most important artists and communities in the Western Desert region of Australia.

While emerging from one of the world’s oldest cultures, contemporary Aboriginal painting has become appreciated for its vivid use of colour, style and imagery in dynamic representations of traditional stories of land, law and spirit.

Gabrielle Pizzi began collecting contemporary Australian Aboriginal art in the late 1970s upon her return to Melbourne after a decade living in Rome and Paris. Her Collection incorporates works by major artists from the most prominent art-producing communities in Central Australia as well as sculptures by respected artists living in various communities in northern Australia.

Mythology and Reality presents works by leading Papunya Tula artists including Ronnie Tjampitjinpa, Michael Nelson Tjakamarra, George Tjungurrayi, Fred Ward Tjungurrayi, Uta Uta Tjangala, Tatali Nangala and Tommy Lowry Tjapaltjarri. Eminent artists from the Utopia, Balgo Hills, Haasts Bluff and Yuendumu communities represented in the exhibition include Alice Nampitjinpa, Emily Kame Kngwarreye and Gloria Petyarre. Many works, such as Michael Nelson Tjakamarra’s densely packed canvas of symbols Five Dreamings 1984 and Fred Ward Tjungurrayi’s Tinagari Men’s Travels at Kiwirrkura 1990 will be instantly recognisable, having been reproduced in international catalogues and exhibited extensively overseas.

Heide Museum of Modern Art is proud to announce the reprint of its award-winning exhibition catalogue to accompany this exhibition at the Australian Embassy in Paris. Created by designers Gollings+Pidgeon, the catalogue has been reprinted as a special bi-lingual French-English edition. This highly successful publication includes essays by Judith Ryan, Senior Curator, Indigenous Art, National Gallery of Victoria, and Geoffrey Bardon, who was one of the first non-anthropological writers on art of this region, and an interview with Gabrielle Pizzi. Full page colour reproductions of works featured in the exhibition – from some of the most important artists and communities in the Western Desert region of Australia – appear alongside artist biographies.