Friday, 22 September - Wednesday, 6 December 2006

Mapping Memories: Aboriginal Paintings of Ancient Lands

Are these contemporary abstract landscapes or intimate maps of their native lands, painted by artists who travel the ancestral country on foot, committing every detail to memory?

Both! “Mapping Memories” features contemporary works by leading artists of Papunya Tula, the birthplace of the modern indigenous art movement, as well as paintings by new generations of artists from Australia’s remote Aboriginal communities.

Among the featured artists are Lindsay Corby Tjapaltjarri, whose precise dotted forms merge and expand to form pulsating patterns; Takariya Napaltjarri, one of the “last nomads,” a group of nine Pintupi people who left their isolated traditional desert life in the early 1980s to join the Aboriginal community at Papunya; and Lorna Brown Napanangka, whose layers of subtle colors reveal intricate geometric arrangements representing familiar places. Also featured is a large Barney Ellaga “Egg Dreaming,” vibrating with his signature colors and centered with the sacred eggs nesting in a sea-green field.

If you’re visiting the Chesapeake Bay area . . .

Booker•Lowe Gallery will be displaying Aboriginal art at the acclaimed Inn at Easton, a lovely restored mansion in the historic district of Easton, Maryland. The owner, Australian Andrew Evans, recently saw some of our collection at an exhibition at the Australian Embassy in Washington and contacted us about organizing a show for the Inn’s sell-out fall and holiday season. When we opened the New York Times restaurant section a few days later and saw a half-page rave review, we started selecting and packing paintings! Check out the Inn at www.theinnateaston.com.