Past Exhibitions SLU

Browse the chronological list of past exhibitions at the Saint Louis University Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCRA), or search for a specific exhibition. Click 鈥淰iew鈥� for more information about an exhibition. If you need further information about an exhibition, please contact us.

Name

Utopia Body Paint Collection and Australian Aboriginal Art from St. Louis Collections

Dates

April 4, 1997 to July 31, 1997

Description

A vigorous cultural revival is evident today throughout Aboriginal communities in Australia. Artists at Utopia -- a tract of Aboriginal freehold land in the central desert of Australia -- have produced some of the most vital, exuberant, and distinctive imagery of the contemporary Aboriginal art movement. Led initially by the women, contemporary art practice at Utopia began via the medium of batik in the late 1970s. A gradual revival of the traditional cycles of cultural renewal along with the advent of acrylic painting in other parts of the desert resulted in a flowering of works by Utopia artists in the late 1980s.

Utopia is the name given to the tribal lands of the Anmatyerre and Alyewarreye people. Situated 180 miles north of Alice Springs, in the very center of Australia, it is a desert land -- yet it has nourished its people and their traditional art for thousands of years. Australian tribal aborigines have survived because of their intimate kinship, knowledge and reverence for their land and for its creators, their ancestors who moved across the land and formed it in the dawn of time, known to them as The Dreaming. For the aborigine every aspect of the land is filled with the meaning and significance it had at creation: the ancestors who formed the land are still present within it.

Each individual is entrusted with his or her own particular Dreaming鈥攊t may be an animal, a piece of vegetation, a rocky outcrop or other natural feature鈥攁nd charged with responsibility for the land and its proper management. Part of that responsibility is discharged in ritual ceremonies of song and dance. Women play a prominent role in these ceremonies, decorating and painting their bodies with images of their own Dreaming to draw the connection between ceremony and land even more tightly. Utopia artists also might make their paintings on the ground, using the natural colors of the sand and the earth.

In 1990 Rodney Gooch, a visionary arts advisor, initiated a community-wide project. The Utopia communities were invited to transfer their body marking to oval-shaped canvas supports which evoke objects familiar to the artists, such as the shield, the dancing board and the churinga (a sacred object of stone or wood on which one's Dreaming is incised or painted). This collection of 77 canvases鈥攖he Utopia Body Paint Collection鈥攄emonstrates the extraordinary adaptability of contemporary aboriginal artists to transfer ancient traditions of image making to new media without losing the power of the images or compromising their ritual significance. Over the past 15 years the artists of Utopia, in common with other tribal peoples of central Australia, have been introduced to a variety of new media from acrylic paint and canvas, to batik, wood block printing and carving. MOCRA is pleased to present these works in St. Louis, a city which has enthusiastically embraced the art of contemporary Australia.

Artists in the exhibition include:

MOCRA thanks the Ladue Investment Partnership, Inc., of St. Louis, MO, for making the Utopia Body Paint Collection available for exhibition. MOCRA is grateful also for the generous loans of art to this exhibition from other St. Louis collections. Acknowledgment is made to Nina Felshin, Independent Curator, New York, for tour coordination for the Collection.

Special acknowledgment is made to Mary Reid Brunstrom, Director, Austral Galllery鈥揂ustralian Contemporary Art, St. Louis, MO. This exhibition was generously assisted by the Embassy of Australia, Washington, D.C.

above:
Installation view of Utopia Body Paint Collection and Australian Aboriginal Art from St. Louis Collections at MOCRA, 1997. Photo by Jeffrey Vaughn.

Related programming

Creativity as Ancestral Mind: Living with the Ancestors

Jennifer Biddle: 鈥淏ody, Country, Canvas: Meaning and Identity in Central Desert Aboriginal Women鈥檚 Art鈥�

Related MOCRA Voices episodes

Episode 8: Mary Reid Brunstrom

Media

Exhibition
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Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre March 2, 2003 to May 11, 2003 Georges Rouault was born in working-class Paris in 1871, and apprenticed as a youth to a stained glass workshop. In late 1890, he enrolled in the 脡cole des Beaux-...
Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre January 18, 2000 to April 2, 2000 Georges Rouault was born in working-class Paris in 1871, and apprenticed as a youth to a stained glass workshop. In late 1890, he enrolled in the 脡cole des Beaux-...
Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre March 21, 1994 to April 26, 1994 Georges Rouault was born in working-class Paris in 1871, and apprenticed as a youth to a stained glass workshop. In late 1890, he enrolled in the 脡cole des Beaux-...
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Highlights from the MOCRA Collection May 30, 2015 to August 2, 2015 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Romare Bearden, Dawoud Bey, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Junko Chodos, Doug DePice, Luis Gonz谩lez Palma, DoDo Jin Ming, Dean Kessman, Frank LaPena, Daniel Ramirez, and Susan S...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection: The Romero Cross April 21, 2018 to July 28, 2018 Seven months of conservation work culminate in the first public showing at MOCRA of Cruz to Bishop Oscar Romero, Martyr of El Salvador, a major mixed media sculpture by Michael Tracy (b. 1943), who first achieved international recognition in the 1980s, exhibiting in the 1982 Venice Biennal...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection March 28, 2006 to July 30, 2006 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Seyed Alavi, Luis Gonz谩lez Palma, Steven Heilmer, Anne Minich, Shahzia Sikander, Kazuaki Tanahashi, and other artists. above: Sr. Helen David Brancato, Crucif...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection June 20, 2004 to August 29, 2004 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Peter Ambrose, Gryphon Blackswan, Daniel Goldstein, Steven Luecking, Gary Passanise, Susan Schwalb, Michael Tracy, and other artists. above: Anne Minich, Annie...
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Highlights from the MOCRA Collection July 29, 1999 to December 22, 1999 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Michael David, Eleanor Dickinson, Steven Heilmer, Charlotte Lichtblau, J. W. Mahoney, Jeffrey Miller, and other artists. above: Michael David, Missing in Actio...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection January 15, 1998 to February 22, 1998 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Gryphon Blackswan, Heidy Sumei Chuang, Greg Edmondson, Jeffrey Miller, Carl Tandatnick, and other artists. above: Gryphon Blackswan, Chasuble for Mass in the T...
Sanctuaries: Recovering the Holy in Contemporary Art, Part Two 鈥� Three Major Installations April 18, 1993 to August 29, 1993 MOCRA's two-part inaugural exhibition features more than 100 works from an wide-ranging roster of artists working in styles ranging from traditional Western figuration to minimalist and geometric abstraction. The artists, generally in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, tend to be disillusioned with the cel...
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MOCRA: 25 September 16, 2018 to March 3, 2019 The Museum of Contemporary Religious Art began with an audacious assertion: many of today鈥檚 visual artists engage with the religious and spiritual dimensions in their work鈥攅ven if they sometimes go about it in ways quite different from prior generations. Despite skepticism from mem...
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Surface to Source February 05, 2020 to November 22, 2020 For his first show curated as Director of MOCRA, David Brinker delves into the MOCRA collection, bringing out works that haven鈥檛 been shown in a number of years and juxtaposing them with perennial favorites. The works from the collection are joined by several works on loan. Meanwhile, the remov...
Quiet Isn't Always Peace February 03, 2021 to May 20, 2021 People everywhere were captivated as Amanda Gorman delivered her poem The Hill We Climb on the steps of the Capitol on Inauguration Day. Her cascading cadences of imagery alluded to orators of the past but unequivocally asserted her own voice in addressing the present moment. A short phrase from...
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This Road Is the Heart Opening: Selections from the MOCRA Collection August 24, 2022 to December 18, 2022 The COVID-19 pandemic has illuminated harmful systemic inequities and our responsibility to name and respond to them. Simultaneously, we are recognizing the importance of attending to our own well-being in mind, body, and spirit, a holistic vision of human wellness that Ignatian spirituality refe...
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Past Exhibitions