darren jorgensen

This catalogue documents several revelations in the art history of Papunya, including the very first work of the 'dot painting' or Western Desert art movement. It represents the most significant exhibition of the Papunya Boards since 1972, and brings to a culmination a decade of research into their origin. This process of revising the art history is first represented by the Vivien Johnson's Once Upon a Time in Papunya, and in this catalogue is brought to a heady conclusion with new archives, interviews with the artists and thier families, and a body of work that was in storage for decades. The show's curator Luke Scholes and catalogue essayist John Kean could not have blown the assumptions around Papunya's origins more definitively, and brought Johnson's brilliant investigations into the daylight with more of a punch.