Ancient and modern
Nicolas Rothwell; 31/5/08
Beyond Sacred: Recent Painting from Australia’s Remote Aboriginal Communities The Collection of Colin and Elizabeth Laverty; Hardie Grant Books, 352pp, $120
At Brisbane’s World Expo in 1988, in front of a series of large Western Desert canvases, shown in “an enclosed, rather claustrophobic exhibition space”, the seeds of one of Australia’s great collections of modern indigenous art were sown. Colin and Liz Laverty, who have put together a remarkable collection in the past 20 years. Colin and Liz Laverty, already passionate collectors of contemporary abstract and figurative paintings, were swept away by what they saw that afternoon. They immersed themselves in the new, fast-developing tradition of Aboriginal art: they began their bush travels, which soon took them across remote Australia, to red sand deserts and to the turquoise bays of Arnhem Land. In this continuing quest, as the couple relate, “we have visited community art centres, and even small outstations, where we have found visually beautiful and culturally interesting paintings”. Above all, of course, the Lavertys were collecting, always collecting, with these precise criteria in mind: the beautiful and the culturally interesting.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23767479-5013571,00.html
Tags: Aboriginal, Art, Australia