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Geoffrey Bardon and Papunya art
- Arts & culture
The prevailing view of the origins of the Aboriginal art movement, as we know it today, is that it was started by Geoffrey Bardon, a white school teacher from Sydney who went to Papunya in Central Australia in the early 1970s. A new biography paints a complex picture of a man whose mental ill-health both hampered and helped his passion for this art. Guest: Kitty Hauser, Sydney-based historian and author. New book 'Art Mania: Geoffrey Bardon and the painting men of Papunya' (Giromondo Publishing, 1 Nov, 2026)Producer: Ann Arnold
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Jeff Barton was not alone and not the first to realise Aboriginal art was art with a capital
.
Northern Territory. He was dazzled by the painting he saw. He began to sell them, taking
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Is this episode right for you?
B1 · Intermediate
Fine if you can follow simple news
- 79% of the words are B1 or easier.
- 154 words a minute: a natural pace.
- 85 harder words (B2 and up) in the whole episode.
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The opening of the episode. The whole transcript is in the player.
harder words (B2+)
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.
Art Mania is the title of the biography. Art Mania, Geoffrey Barton and the painting man of Papania. Kitty, welcome to Late Night Live. Hi. Kitty, in 1971, this young man drove his combi in the middle of the night into Papania. What did he find? Well, he found a party and for whatever reason that particular scene stayed with him and he wrote about it a lot later, how he found the
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