In August of last year, Aboriginal Art Directory writer Jeremy Eccles wrote a review of an exhibition then headed for the Art Gallery of NSW to showcase the work of artists from Milingimbi from the 1950s. In it, he wrote that Milingimbi didn’t even appear in the Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture published in 2000 “ an extraordinary omission given its influence on anthropologist, Donald Thompson, Australian author, Xavier Herbert, and institutional collectors, Ed Ruhe and Karel Kupka. It even made history when the Voyager Space Probe left earth carrying with it recordings of Milingimbi ceremonial songs. (More of its history can be found here.)
Yet despite its seeming disappearance, artwork from Milingimbi is held in major collections including the British Museum, the Smithsonian, National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales and other major Australian Institutions.
Now work is underway to revitalise the Art Centre and to support this effort, Milingimbi is hosting an online auction to start 10 April (ending 21 April) 2017. It is offering 39 artworks, each with a starting bid of $100.
