July 1st, 2025

Keep Dreaming! Jeffrey Moose Gallery’s 30th Anniversary Continues

Jeffrey Moose Gallery is proud to announce an exhibition of dot paintings by indigenous artists from Yuendumu in Australia’s Central Desert for the months of July and August. Receptions will be held on First Saturday (due to the holiday) July 5th, 6-8 PM and First Friday, August 1st, 6-8 PM. A Facebook livestream will happen from about 5:20 to 5:40. Mr. Moose will deliver a brief talk on the genre at 7pm at both events. This year we will change the show over the course of the two month period, so visitors will experience different work in July and August.

Every August, The Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair draws thousands from around the world. The 2024 fair featured more than 1500 artists represented by 76 art centers throughout the country. But with the world art market in the ditch, many art centers are struggling to come up with the funds to travel. Consequently, 2025 will have fewer participants. Under these circumstances, the gallery is even more compelled to display these magical works.

Few communities are more important to the genre: Papunya, Yuendumu and Utopia led the way. 2021 was the 50th Anniversary of the first Dot Paintings. Traditional ground paintings by the Yuendumu artists, known as Warlukurlangu (Home of the Fire Dreaming) made history in Paris in 1989, part of the international survey, "Magiciennes De La Terre." At this sensational exhibit of Indigenous art from around the world, a group of men from Yuendumu packed huge amounts of desert earth and crushed flowers from home, shaping the material into an enormous "Ground Painting" to honor the Yarla Jukurrpa, a creation story about the bush potato.

Steven Jupurrula Nelson from Yuendumu was a finalist in last year's TELSTRA Awards and Julie Nangala Robertson won top prize for painting the previous year. Several works by Yeundumu Artists are on display in The Seattle Art Museum’s third floor galleries. It was through the Kaplan/Levy Collection shown at SAM that Jeffrey Moose was connected to this remote desert art co-op. In 2004, Jeffrey and his father and son visited Yuendumu, establishing a longstanding and fruitful relationship.

Dot paintings are images rendered from an aerial perspective that use symbols to represent people, animals, plants, weather systems and other forms to tell ancient creation stories. In their original form, these stories are part of the Song Lines, complex sets of story-poems recited in rhythmic patterns that link sacred places across the Australian continent.