Geoffrey Bardon and Papunya art

Jeff Barton was not alone and not the first to realise Aboriginal art was art with a capital A. But in the early 1970s this troubled young man found himself teaching at Papanya in the Northern Territory. He was dazzled by the painting he saw. He began to sell them, taking no money for himself. Kitty Housam, I guess this morning, wrote,

It was the beginnings, or so the story went, of what became an industry, an important source of income for remote Aboriginal communities, and the nation's most significant contribution to the international world of art. That story she's examined in a biography just published of Geoffrey Barton. The story, she finds, is more complex, darker and more interesting.