Portals to Place: Three Papunya Tula Artists | Edel Assanti
Edel Assanti’s show notes, for this exhibition of three aboriginal Australian artists, state:
The paintings in this exhibition use abstraction as a strategy to conceal protected knowledge, depicting sacred landscapes and associated narratives through repetition and careful obfuscation.
This seems like a reach, potentially. I say potentially because the motivations of the artists remain obscure to my white, western, global north gaze. I say a reach because of the extraordinarily precious and careful language in the rest of the press release. Despite reading it several times, I still am none the wiser to what a “Dreaming” actually is. But anyway, seems important, given that it is Carefully Capitalised.
The artists remain silent, the show notes were written by a curator. What is clear, though is that Papanya Tula is an art cooperative in western Australia, that is locally owned. And that the works on show in London will sell for very large amounts. Beyond that, it’s all carefully obfuscated, and not just by the artists.
Purely aesthetically, of the three, the work of Yukultji Napangati stood out most to me. Her works are composed of closely linked dots and lines in polymer paint - close enough that it sort of blends into one when viewed from afar, but different enough that the lines distort, become hard even to look at. On a sunny day, it was almost unbearable to view face on, and I had to retire to the side to make it out.
I was maybe too harsh on the notes, which contain the useful pointer that Marrapinti’s work “suggest the optical effect of shimmering heat and light on sand”, which seems just right. Beyond that, I have no idea, and the circumstances in which the art was produced and promoted remain obscure. Looking’s enough. then.
Portals to Place: Three Papunya Tula Artists is at Edel Assanti (London). 20 March - 16 May 2026