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Email PageNew Work From Utopia
June 21, 2007- July 21, 2007
Reception: June 21, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Gloria Petyarre, Minnie Pwerle, Barbara Weir
Robert Steele Gallery
511 W 25th StThe Robert Steele Gallery at 511 West 25th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues in Chelsea is pleased to announce the opening of New Work From Utopia, a survey of contemporary Australian Aboriginal art, opening on Thursday, June 21st through July 21st, 2007. The exhibition will also incorporate work by Australian photographer and filmmaker Gretchen Mercedes, vivid photographs of the North Country, whose terrain is the source of much Aboriginal painting. A reception will be held Thursday, June 21st from 6 to 8pm. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 11 to 6pm and by appointment.
New Work From Utopia, in conjunction with the DACOU Gallery (the Dreaming Art Centre of Utopia) in Adelaide and with a concurrent exhibition at the Embassy of Australia, Washington, DC (from 19 July to 1 September, 2007), will be the first major exposition of Australian Native Art in New York City since 2004.
Named by German settlers immigrating to Australia in the 1920’s hoping for better times, Utopia since the mid-1970’s has played a distinct and important role in the development of modern Australian Aboriginal Art. From the Womens’ Batik Project of 1978 (begun to empower local women and provide a source of income in advance of their regaining land rights to their ancestral homes) through to the Asia Society’s Dreamings exhibition in New York in the ‘80’s, Utopia has come to be associated with some of the finest and most famous contemporary Aboriginal artists.
Among the artists included in the exhibition will be the late Emily Kame Kngwarreye, who helped pave the way for contemporary Australian Aboriginal art, Gloria Petyarre, Minnie Pwerle and Barbara Weir, as well as many artists who are as yet less internationally known.
Robert Hughes has called Australian Aboriginal Art the “world’s last great art movement,” and its richness, complexity and depth support that view. Emerging from the Earth’s most ancient and still functioning culture, this is no “outsider art,” and the case could be made that all other art traditions present a parallel aesthetic universe at best. Perhaps, in a sense, it is we who are all “outsiders.”
Born in London, Robert Steele spent much of his adult life in Australia, and with his Anima Gallery pioneered the exhibition of Native Australian Art and artists. Now, as the only gallery in New York with an extensive major collection of this work, and as one of only a few in the US dealing with it in any substantial way, the Robert Steele Gallery is especially proud to present New Work From Utopia.
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show
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