Papunya Tula

About

The Papunya Tula Art Movement began in 1971 when a school teacher, Geoffrey Bardon, encouraged some of the men to paint a mural on the local school. The murals sparked off tremendous interest in the community of Papunya in the Northern Territory and soon many men started painting, with women artists carving out their own space in subsequent decades.

In 1972 the artists successfully established their own company which is entirely owned and directed by Aboriginal people from the Western Desert. The company derives its name from Papunya, a settlement 240km north-west of Alice Springs, with two art centres in Kintore and Kiwirrkura.

“Before the early 1970s, Aboriginal artists had never painted their stories with acrylic on canvas using a traditional lexicon of signs and symbols.

That groundbreaking innovation, engineered by Geoff Bardon, translated one of the world’s oldest living artforms into an utterly contemporary movement.” - John McDonald

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