18 June – 2 July, 2008

Greenhill Galleries, Dalkeith in conjunction with Gecko Gallery, Broome is pleased to present an exhibition of significant paintings by notable Western and Central desert Indigenous artists.

Songlines are the ancestral tracks crossing the deserts that are made by the Indigenous ancestors as they created the shape and forms of the landscape and major ceremony sites. The paintings by contemporary Indigenous artists are a continuum of this mythology, mapping the country in visual language.

The exhibition has as its focus, two specific groups; Pintupi artists whose country extends from Tjukurrla in Western Australia to Kintore in the Northern Territory and the Anmatyerre / Alyawarr artists from the Utopia communities, located along the Sandover River in the eastern Central Desert.

While stylistically distinct, each painting is an aerial conception of the artist's desert country with layers of meaning in the painted surface and the mythological story that they interpret.

This is a seminal exhibition featuring paintings with impeccable provenance by some of Australia’s leading Indigenous artists, such as Willy Tjungurrayi, Walangkura Napanangka, Ningura Naparrula, Minnie Pwerle, Barbara Weir and Elizabeth Kemarre. Many of their works are held in major public and private collections in Australia and internationally, and are highly sought after.