Balgo Indigenous Painting Exhibition

Opening: Sat 17 Apr, 10 am – 12 pm
Exhibition: 17 Apr – 12 May
Vietnam Museum of Ethnology

As part of its “Once in a 1000 years: An Australian Gift to Hanoi” program, the Australian Embassy is pleased to present the exhibition “Balgo: Contemporary Australian Art from the Balgo Hills”. The artworks in this exhibition convey the energy and dynamism of the artists of the Warlayirti Artists Art Centre in the Balgo Hills region of Western Australia.

The small community of Balgo, also known by the Kukatja language name of Wirrimanu, is one of Australia’s most remote settlements. The painters from Balgo include a generation of tribal elders who grew up in a context of customary tribal law, initiation and living from the land. Their youth was spent as nomadic huntergatherers in the harsh environment of the Western Desert under strict traditional law. It is this traditional knowledge – of their inherited country and its associated stories and ceremonies of the mythic Tjukurrpa (Dreaming) – that Balgo artists paint today in a new and vital art form that blends the ancient with the contemporary; the abstract with representations of landscape; the spiritual with the political.

Consisting of contemporary paintings and etchings, this exhibition presents a range of stories that demonstrate the strong connection Aboriginal people have with their traditions and the ways in which those traditions are being maintained and celebrated today.

Tickets

Free invitations for the opening (maximum 2 invitations per person) can be collected at the Australian Embassy, 8 Dao Tan St., Ba Dinh Dis., Hanoi from 12 Apr. Otherwise please pay normal entrance fee at the museum.