Kunsthaus Zug: Colours from the heart of Australia

Powerful, earthy, pictorial: with its current exhibition, the Kunsthaus Zug is carrying out pioneering work in the field of contemporary Aboriginal painting.

The fascination of aboriginal art: the collector couple Joëlle and Pierre Clément are exhibiting their first-class collection at the Kunsthaus Zug.

Most Europeans are unaware that the indigenous peoples in the endless and sparsely populated expanses of Central Australia intensively create their own form of art. It's a young scene: in the early 1970s, Australian art educator Geoffrey Bardon introduced painting to the aborigines while travelling the area. The aborigines transferred their traditional art, which is normally applied to the skin, the desert sand or to simple fabrics, to canvas. The results were powerful, expressive paintings that were highly esteemed in art circles within a short time, and are now in demand internationally. At first glance, these aboriginal paintings have many parallels to Western art, but their backgrounds are mostly of a different nature: it is their cultural identity, the spiritual attitudes of the indigenous people, their social structures and an enormous earthiness, as well as the confrontation with their own uprooting and displacement by white settlers.

The collector couple Joëlle and Pierre Clément, who live in the Canton of Zug, have travelled the Northern Territory and - by chance - became aware of the blossoming art scene there. After a number of visits and numerous contacts, the couple Clément has built up a high-calibre collection of contemporary Aboriginal art, which can now be seen in Zug as the first thematic presentation of this kind in a Swiss art museum. 80 selected works by 50 artists from three different regions of the Northern Territory are represented in the north wing of the Kunsthaus Zug. The arrangement of the paintings is divided according to either topic or region. A part of the exhibition is dedicated to relatives of the most famous Aboriginal artist, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, who’s solo exhibition is set up in the south wing (see box at the end of the article).

The large-format paintings testify to the deep roots of the artists in their "mother country". Guided by their culture, the structure of the landscape, indeed of the soul, they express their distinct identity in a multi-earthly, but intense colour, often with the view "from above" - the aborigines hardly use easels, they simply paint onto canvasses lying on the floor. Right from the start, Kunsthaus director Matthias Haldemann realised that the Clément collection must be presented in its full scope - and not just part of it. "These paintings do not belong in an ethnological museum; they are worthy of an art gallery. We celebrate them as international contemporary paintings”, says Haldeman. They represent a starting impetus for ethical-moral issues in the context of dealing with an old, sophisticated culture.

Exhibitions "My mother country" and Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Kunsthaus Zug, exhibition until 12 January 2020. www.kunsthauszug.ch

First solo exhibition of works by Emily Kame Kngwarreyes in Europe

The large-format works of Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910-1996), an Aboriginal artist from the Anmatyrre tribe, are closely related to the Clément collection, and her works are highly prized on the international art market. Kngwarreye is still regarded as an aboriginal artist of the first hour, and her works can be found in major Australian and American collections. According to director Matthias Haldemann, the exhibition in Zug is the first time that Kngwarreye's paintings can be seen for the as part of a solo exhibition in a European art gallery.

Thanks to the links between the collector couple Clément and the Australian patron Janet Holt and her colleague Peter de Campo, it has been possible to bring together in Switzerland a selection of 20 paintings from different phases of the artist's work from two private collections. Janet Holt, who was closely acquainted with Kngwarreye for many years, was overwhelmed by the artist's intense presence in the two rooms of the Kunsthaus South Wing. Holt admires tremendous energy and creative power in the paintings, especially considering the fact that the Australian was already approaching her 80s when she started painting seriously.