Streets of Papunya: The re-invention of Papunya art at ANU Drill Hall Gallery

More than six months ago, the ANU Drill Hall Gallery closed its doors for a makeover during the summer break. As is so often the case, old buildings have many hidden unexpected delights and the facelift has resulted in a substantial rebuilding inside the shell of the historic structure.

The refurbishment has been extensive with new gallery climate control and LED lighting and insulation installed and with the exhibition spaces reoriented. Sidney Nolan's Riverbend now has a gallery to itself on the left as you enter, while the old ANU art collection gallery has been absorbed into the temporary exhibition space. At last the ANU has a gallery comparable to that of many of the other Australian universities, fully equipped to accommodate loans and exhibitions from public national and international art collections. Another plus is that the gallery has extended its opening hours by two hours and is open 10am to 5pm, Wednesday to Sunday. The ANU still lacks a dedicated gallery space in which to display its own collection of art, now numbering almost 3000 items, which is scattered throughout the university.

The inaugural exhibition for the revamped Drill Hall is the spectacular Streets of Papunya show, which is a touring exhibition from the University of New South Wales with Canberra the final destination on its national tour. I first visited Papunya, a remote and impoverished government settlement some 260 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs, about 20 years ago, and found a desolate place. The mural painted on the school walls that was central to the history of the revival of contemporary Aboriginal art had been destroyed and there seemed little artistic activity. I spoke to the teacher at the school, who produced some photographs of the place taken in the early 1970s and suggested I go on to Mount Liebig, Kintore and Haasts Bluff if I wanted to see contemporary desert art, for the little that was left in Papunya had already been picked over by the carpetbaggers. The original painting men had formed Papunya Tula Artists and were operating out of Alice Springs. I drove on and did not look back.

Papunya changed in 2007 with the establishment of the Papunya Tjupi art centre that was dominated by women artists, many of whom were the daughters and the granddaughters of the revolutionary Papunya Tula Artists of the 1970s. The curator of this exhibition, Vivien Johnson, has been involved with the artists of the central and western deserts for more than three decades and has been an active participant in the creation of this new art centre.

The exhibition traces the development of painting in Papunya from the very late work of Albert Namatjira, through the glory days of Papunya painting in the 1970s and 1980s, but focuses primarily on paintings from the present. The touring show has been supplemented with strategic loans from Canberra collections. The breathtaking painting by Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, Yala, Wild Potato Dreaming (1981) from the National Gallery is one of the great works in the exhibition and is not matched in quality, intensity and distilled perfection by anything else from the later period.

Some of the more recent highlights include the work of Isobel Gorey Nambajimba, the daughter of Jimmy Long Tjangala; Punata Stockman Nungarrayi, the eldest child of Kumuntjayi Stockman Tjapaltjarri; Candy Nelson Nakamarra, the daughter of Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula and Martha McDonald Napaltjarri, child of Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi. What emerges strongly in the exhibition is the sense of heritage, where the Papunya tradition is traced from father to daughter and Papunya artists work together, sometimes collaboratively with one inspiring the art of another.

The exhibition and Johnson's accompanying eponymous volume document in a memorable visual manner the enduring legacy of Papunya.