One of Australia’s most acclaimed Indigenous artists, Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri was a founder of the Western Desert art movement. The Mysteries that Remain is the first museum survey of Namarari’s work, featuring paintings on canvas and board from 1971-1990. It reveals the depth and complexity of Namarari’s artistic experiments as he restlessly strove to present the ancestral narratives of his desert homelands in new and innovative ways. This exhibition sheds new light on this enigmatic and important artist as he moved from detailed figurative works through to grand abstractions. A quiet, reserved man, happy to be in the background, this exhibition places Namarari in his rightful place as contemporary master.
Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri (1926-1998) was a founding member of the Western Desert art movement. He was born in the desert of the Northern Territory, migrated to a Lutheran mission at a small outstation, and worked for many years as a stockman at various cattle stations. He didn’t pick up a paintbrush until age forty-five, when local art teacher Geoffrey Bardon worked with thirteen elders in the community of Papunya to paint a mural on the wall of the local school. His artwork is represented in major public and private collections across the world.
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