Mabel Juli (Australia, b.circa 1931), Garnkiny Ngarrangkarni, 2006, natural earth pigments on canvas, 182.0 x 152.0 cm. Purchased with funds provided by the Aboriginal Collection Benefactors Group 2006 © Mabel Juli, courtesy Warmun Art Centre. Licensed by Copyright Agency.
Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists highlight our shared understandings of the night sky.
‘We can all look at the stars, whichever sky we’re looking at.’ Gulumbu Yunupingu
Taking a transhistorical approach, Under the Stars presents stargazing and mapping by Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, highlighting the commonalities and connections in our shared attempts to understand the night sky and our place in relation to it.
This exhibition marks 250 years since Captain Cook landed at Kamay (Botany Bay). For his first voyage (1768-71), Cook had two main missions — to document the transit of Venus and to locate the ‘unknown southern land’. He documented the transit of Venus in 1769 and reached Kamay (Botany Bay) on 29 April 1770. Under the Stars uses his first aim as a catalyst to bring to light the fascination with and the understandings of stars and the night sky.
With a focus on Indigenous knowledge, it presents an opportunity to explore – at a time when discussions of Cook will be dominated by questions of ownership – an expanse that is not owned and connects us all.
SOURCE: Art Gallery of New South Wales.