CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA.- In 1971, a small group of Aboriginal artists from Australia’s remote deserts changed the face of global contemporary art. The Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia opened a new exhibition on June 24 titled Irrititja Kuwarri Tjungu (Past & Present Together): 50 Years of Papunya Tula Artists that shares and celebrates their story, a story of humble beginnings and great success that continues to this day.

The township of Papunya was founded in 1959 as a settlement for Aboriginal people who were relocated from their homelands across a large area in the heart of the Australian desert. Some had considerable experience with white Australians. For others, life in Papunya represented their first encounter with non-Indigenous people. Inside this bubbling, cross-cultural cauldron, a small group of men began to paint their ancestral designs on whatever they could find, which at the time was scraps of cardboard, linoleum and masonite.

Artists at Papunya expressed the conditions of their cultural and geographic displacement that have come to define the contemporary experience of Indigenous people and refugees worldwide. Painting began as a vehicle for the survival and transmission of cultural knowledge, but quickly grew into a powerful medium for economic and social justice. In 1972 the artists banded together to form the Papunya Tula Artists company, which still operates today under the guidance of its Aboriginal board of directors. The international success of Papunya Tula Artists inspired the creation of similar cooperatives across Australia, creating a multi-million-dollar industry and helping artists return to their ancestral homelands. Over the last fifty years Papunya Tula has redefined Aboriginal Australian art, sparking one of the most important contemporary art movements of our time.




Curator Henry Skerritt says, “This is one of the most important stories in contemporary art. No other group of artists have been so successful in forcing Indigenous art into the consciousness of the art world. Today it is not uncommon to see the works of Papunya Tula Artists hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, or at contemporary art biennales and art fairs and major galleries in galleries. This exhibition gives us a moment to look back and ask how this happened. And the answer is really the grit and determination of these artists to share their culture with the world.”

Irrititja Kuwarri Tjungu (Past & Present Together) celebrates the 50th anniversary of the moment when this movement began, from the very first experiments on scraps of board through to the epic, abstract canvas paintings that travel the world today. Inspired by the sweeping ancestral landscape of the Australian desert, these paintings are some of the world’s greatest stories of resilience, self-determination and the power of art to transform our world.

This initial opening is the first part of a two-part exhibition spanning nearly two years. The first part, on view June 24 – February 27, 2022, tracks the movement from its beginnings in 1971 through to the mid-1990s. The second part, on view March 17, 2022 – February 26, 2023, celebrates the role of women artists and features paintings from the 1990s to today.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog and an extensive virtual resource, both to be released later this year.