Geoffrey Bardon
Geoffrey Bardon ( born 1940 in Sydney, † 6 May 2003 in Taree in Australia ) was an artist, who as the trigger of the most important modern art movement of the Aborigines, the dot -painting in Papunya, the Punktemalens, is considered as an art teacher.
Profession
Bardon studied law for three years at the University of Sydney, before deciding at the National Art School in Sydney to study art, which he left with the conclusion in 1966. After that, he taught at various schools before he taught in 1971 at the elementary school in Papunya, a settlement of about 250 kilometers west Aboriginal Alice Springs. Bardon produced three films and two books on the art of the Aborigines. He lived 22 years in Taree with his wife Dorn and his sons Michael and James.
Dot Painting
From 1971 he worked as an art teacher at Papunya. There he persuaded to paint their stories of the Dreamtime in the years 1971 and 1972, the Aborigines in Papunya. They drew first on the school walls in Papunya the honeypot ants mural after Old Tom Onion Tjapangati, the keeper of the Honey Ant Dreamings, permission for such a mural was. The murals were indeed removed due to cleanliness Regulation of the school, but had lasting impact. He encouraged the painter to use Painting backgrounds of wood and canvas and brought them synthetic colors. Under these conditions it was possible to paint pictures on canvas and traditional pattern with lines were replaced in 1980 by dots on the canvas. Thus, the art style of the dot- painting ( dot-painting ) was born. It came in 1971 establishing the Papunya Tula Artist Cooperative in the cultural region of the Western Desert. Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, one of the major painters of this school, transformed in this cooperative the traditional style of painting into a commercial objective. Johnny Warangkula Jupurrula was one of the first who perfected this form of dot painting and iconographic elements created that dissolve in the image.