The University of Queensland’s successful exhibit of Lockhart River Aboriginal art is continuing its international tour with a two-month showing at the University of Virginia.
The Virginia exhibit of Our Way: Contemporary Aboriginal Art from Lockhart River will run from January 15 to March 15, and follows a successful stint at Stony Brook University in New York.
UQ lecturer in art history and exhibition curator, Dr Sally Butler, who arrives in Virginia in time for the opening, said the tour had so far been a great success.
It’s fantastic that The University of Queensland and the Queensland government have supported the US tour of this exhibition,” she said.
There is a very healthy market for Aboriginal art in the US, and this tour has really lifted the profile of Lockhart River within that market.”
Our Way will be displayed within the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia, a museum established in 1997 which exhibits only Australian Aboriginal art.
I’m really pleased that the exhibition is heading to Virginia, Dr Butler said.
Kluge-Ruhe has one of the leading international Aboriginal art collections and features a lot of work from Arnhem Land and Central Australia.
I think this collection from North Queensland will be a most welcome addition.
Our Way is the first exhibition to bring together the works of the Lockhart River Gang, a group of young artists from Lockhart River, a remote Aboriginal community in Queensland’s Cape York, located approximately 800km north of Cairns.
The group is led by internationally recognised painters Rosella Namok, Samantha Hobson and Fiona Omeenyo.
Audiences tend to love both the artwork and the story behind it, Dr Butler said.
The artwork itself has a beautiful sense of colour and a very keen sense of environment, but there is also a wonderful good-news story of the young Aboriginal people behind it.
On February 13, Professor Terry Smith, a leading Australian art historian now based in the USA, will deliver a public lecture at Kluge-Ruhe to mark the opening of a satellite exhibit of Our Way.
During July and August 2007 Our Way was shown at the National University of Singapore before making its way to Stony Brook University, New York, in October 2007.
Our Way is supported by the lavishly illustrated, hardback publication of the same title, published by The University of Queensland Press.
The exhibition is presented by The University of Queensland, one of Australia’s top four research-intensive universities, and recently ranked at number 33 in the world in The Times Higher Education Supplement.
The University of Virginia, like UQ, is a member of Universitas 21, a global network of research-intensive universities.
Further information on Our Way is available from The University of Queensland Art Museum website.
Media inquiries: Nick Mitzevich, Director of The University of Queensland Art Museum (3365 3046, n.mitzevich@uq.edu.au) or Penny Robinson at UQ Communications (3365 9723, penny.robinson@uq.edu.au)
