ANANGU COLLECTIVE

Why are these specific artworks the subject of this first monograph? Produced in 2018, the sumptuous paintings, as is the Kulata Tjuta Kupi Kupi installation, are collaborative artworks. They are reminiscent of the collaborative production process of art in Aboriginal Australia. These major works, in which a variety of Dreaming stories that define the region converge, form cornerstones of the collection that lies at the heart of the Fondation Opale. The Fondation Opale, and its founder and driving force Bérengère Primat, has a particularly strong and active relationship with the art centers and the artists of that region of Australia. Several journeys were made to the APY lands in Central Australia. Both paintings, to which respectively several senior women and men collaborated, were commissioned by Bérengère Primat and the painting process abundantly documented. These magisterial paintings are testimony to the continuum of culture and intimate knowledge of the land through art.

Kupi Kupi, an iteration of the ongoing Kulata Tjuta (many spears in the Pitjantjatjara language) initiated in 2010, is a contemporary and monumental art installation consisting of 1500 spears. It is a metaphor for contemporary Anangu society and the unpredictable direction in which it is moving.