Yuendumu Doors suite

Darwin : Northern Editions Print Workshop for Warlukurlangu Artists, Yuendumu, 2000. Thirty sugar lift etchings, printed in colour from single plates, each titled lower centre and editioned lower left 56 / 75 by the publisher, each personally signed by the artist either ‘P S’ (Paddy Stewart) or ‘X’ (Paddy Sims, who could not write), each sheet measuring 35 x 28 cms, the size of the plates various, housed in mylar sheets in a custom Zetta Florence buckram portfolio.

In 1982, in the small township of Yuendumu nearly 300 kilometres northeast of Alice Sprints, five Walpiri elders painted 30 doors of the local primary school with ancient designs known as kuruwarri in order to educate the local children about their culture, laws and heritage, known as the Dreamtime. The five men who painted the doors were Paddy Jupurrurla Nelson, Roy Jupurrurla Curtis, Paddy Japaljarri Stewart, Paddy Japaljarri Sims, and Larry Jungarrayi Spencer. Supplied with acrylic paints by the school principal, these ancestral images which had traditionally been drawn into the sand and drifted away, were recorded with permanency in paint, and represent the origins of the Warlpiri art movement. The significance of these doors was documented in The Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies publication Kuruwarri : Yuendumu doors (1987, reprinted in 1992).

In the early 1990s the doors were removed while the school was renovated, and transferred to the South Australian Museum in 1995. In 1999, master printmaker Basil Hall approached the two elder artists Paddy Sims and Paddy Stewart with the proposal to redraw the kuruwarri images on to etching plates, to further preserve and disseminate the ancestral knowledge painted on the doors. The resulting series of etchings created over the next two years represents some of the first instances of knowledge of the Dreaming being recorded through the medium of printmaking, with the series winning the Telstra Work on Paper Award in the year of publication.

The Yuendumu Doors series is a highly significant document of First Nations culture from the Walpiri language group, and represents the first instances of this traditional knowledge being recorded through the western method of printmaking.

‘This series of Warlpiri kuruwarri (ancestral designs) is based on the Yuendumu Doors of 1983, when Paddy Stewart, Paddy Sims and three other Warlpiri elders painted their Jukurrpa (Dreamings) on thirty Yuendumu school doors. The Yuendumu Doors signalled the origin of painting with modern materials in the community. The etching medium has been brilliantly used to enable the ancestral signs and symbols that comprise the Warlpiri visual language to be easily read against a range of plain backgrounds. Owing to the small scale of the plates, the artists decided just to paint the kuruwarri, the symbols that tell each jukurrpa, and not the background dots present in the Doors.’ – National Gallery of Victoria

 

Exhibition history (other examples) :

18th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, The Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin, 2001 (winner of the Telstra Work on Paper Award category)

Yuendumu Door Etchings, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 21 April – 3 June, 2001

Opening Doors : the art of Yuendumu, Aboriginal Art Museum, Utrecht, 2006

Opening Doors – Warlukurlangu Collection, Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Germany, 2006

One sun, one moon, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 3 July 2007 – 2 December 2007

Etched in the sun : prints made by indigenous artists in collaboration with Basil Hall & printers, 1997 – 2007. Canberra, ANU Drill Hall Gallery, 25 September – 2 November 2008

Yuendumu : of fire and water, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 4 June 2016 – 8 January 2017

Yuendumu Doors. The Residency, Alice Springs, July 2018.

 

Collections (other examples) :

The British Museum, London

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Charles Darwin University Art Collection, Darwin

Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs

 

Literature :

STEWART, Paddy Japaljarri et al. Kuruwarri : Yuendumu doors. Canberra : Aboriginal Studies Press, 1987

SYKE, Jill, Look, ‘Opening doors’, pp. 14-15, Melbourne, Sep 2001.

PETITJEAN, Georges (editor). Opening doors : the art of Yuendumu. Zwolle : Waanders, 2006.

NICHOLLS, Christine. One sun one moon: Aboriginal art in Australia, ‘Painting with passion and purpose: Yuendumu, Lajamanu, Willowra, Nyirrpi and Ikuntji’, pg. 195-201, Sydney, 2007, 201 (colour illus.)

HALL, Basil and MUNDINE, Djon. Etched in the sun : prints made by indigenous artists in collaboration with Basil Hall & printers, 1997-2007. Canberra : ANU Drill Hall Gallery, [2008], pp. 28-29.

COPPEL, Stephen. Out of Australia : prints and drawings from Sidney Nolan to Rover Thomas. London : British Museum Press, 2011, p. 178

JONES, Philip. Behind the doors : an art history from Yuendumu. Adelaide : South Australian Museum in association with Wakefield Press, 2014.

 

Provenance :

Northern Editions, School of Fine Arts, Northern Territory University, Darwin, Northern Territory

The Laverty Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in 2001

Aboriginal + Contemporary Art from the Laverty Collection, Deutscher & Hackett, Melbourne, 13 December 2022, lot 47

acquired from the above