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Dimensions: largest: 18.5 by 8.2 cm smallest: 18.2 by 6.8 cm
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Provenance: Printed by Northern Editions, Darwin in 2000-01 for Warlukurlangu Artists, Yuendumu
Corporate collection
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Literature: Perkins, H. et al. (eds.), One Sun One Moon: Aboriginal Art in Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2007, pp.200-201, Doors 1,3,4,11,20,17,26,27,30 illus.
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Notes: A series of 30 etchings based on the Yuendumu School Doors paintings made at Yuendumu, Northern Territory, by the two surviving artists who painted the original school doors in 1983. See Warlukurlangu Artists, Kuruwarri: Yuendumu Doors, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra, 1987
In this series of etchings Paddy Stewart and Paddy Sims have reinterpreted the Jukurrpa (Dreamings) painted on to the original school doors. The Yuendumu School Door project was devised by the headmaster, Terry Davis, in consultation with the senior Warlpiri men to make the school 'look less "European" ... by paint(ing) the school doors with traditional designs (E. Michaels in Warlukurlangu Artists 1987, p.135). The school doors were painted with kuruwarri (men's traditional designs) by Larry Jungurrayi Spencer (1919-90), Paddy Japaljarri Sims, Paddy Jupurrurla Nelson (1920-98), Roy Jupurrurla Curtis and Paddy Japaljarri Stewart, with the help of some of the schoolchildren. The thirty doors bear twentyseven separate Jukurrpa to which all members of the community had an ancestrally-inherited association.
The painting of the doors was an affirmation of the Warlpiri's cultural strength, and it also allowed the men to work on a scale with which they were accustomed, in relation to the size of ceremonial ground paintings. The anthropologist Eric Michaels, who was conducting research among the Warlpiri at Yuendumu at the time, saw the painted doors as a major accomplishment for 'contemporary international art as well as an achievement in indigenous culture' and 'these doors seemed to strike a chord with issues and images that were being negotiated in the art galleries of Sydney, Paris and New York' (ibid. 1987:135). The doors project also acted as a catalyst for male Warlpiri artists to approach the public art domain with paintings of substance, ie. on a large scale, in which they had the physical space to elaborate complex ancestral episodes, rather than on the small canvasboards which, they felt, restricted them to details of narratives. Within two years of the School Door project, Warlukurlangu Artists cooperative was established to serve the Warlpiri artists' needs and to promote their work in the public domain. The original doors are now housed at the South Australian Museum in Adelaide.
This set of etchings is sold with 30 accompanying Warlukurlangu Artists certificates
