Australian dot paintings on display at Jeffrey Moose Gallery

By Luciano Marano • August 13, 2019 8:30 am
Image courtesy of the Jeffrey Moose Gallery | Agnes Nampijinpa Brown’s “Ngapa Jukurrpa, Puyurru / Water Dreaming, Puyurru,” on display at the Jeffrey Moose Gallery through September.
Image courtesy of the Jeffrey Moose Gallery | Agnes Nampijinpa Brown’s “Ngapa Jukurrpa, Puyurru / Water Dreaming, Puyurru,” on display at the Jeffrey Moose Gallery through September.

Jeffrey Moose Gallery will host an exhibition of paintings by indigenous artists from Yuendemu, in Australia’s Central Desert, through September.

Dot paintings are images rendered from an aerial perspective which use symbols to represent people, animals, plants, weather systems and other forms in telling ancient creation stories.

In their original form, these stories are part of the Song Lines, complex sets of story-poems recited in rhythmic pattern that link places across the Australian continent.

Traditional ground paintings by these artists, known as Warlukurlangu (Home of the Fire Dreaming) made history in Paris in 1989, part of the international survey, “Magiciennes De La Terre.”

At this sensational exhibit of indigenous art from throughout the world, a group of men from Yuendemu packed tons of desert earth and crushed flowers from home, shaping the material into an enormous “Ground Painting” to honor the Yarla Jukurrpa, a creation story about the bush potato.

Several works by Warlukurlangu artists are on display in The Seattle Art Museum’s third floor galleries. It was through the Kaplan/Levy Collection shown at SAM that island gallery owner Jeffrey Moose was connected to this remote desert art.

On exhibit will be works by 14 painters from the center.

Jeffrey Moose Gallery is at 181 Winslow Way East, Suite F, and is open from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday.