Whitby is the town from which Captain James Cook first set sail for the Antipodes, taking the Endeavour, a locally made ship, halfway around the world in 1768. By 1771 he had charted not only the entire coast of New Zealand but also the eastern coast of Australia – a triumph for Britain, though it spelt darker news for the Indigenous people of both territories. This exhibition – curated by Rebecca Hossack, whose gallery in London became, in 1988, the first to exhibit Aboriginal art – brings together acrylic paintings by Warlpiri people from the Northern Territory desert town of Yuendumu, noted for its community of Aboriginal artists (until 5 October). Also on display are works by the British artist Patrick Waterhouse, made in collaboration with Warlpiri artists, in which Waterhouse’s photographs of Central Australia and colonial documents from archives are overlaid by dot paintings that bring an Aboriginal sense of Country to an otherwise European perspective.
Find out more from the Whitby Museum’s website.
Preview below | View Apollo’s Art Diary
