The exhibition derives from a 2023 gift to the Nevada Museum of Art by Robert Kaplan and Margaret Levy of seventy-two works from across Australia. According to Apsara DiQuinzio, the Museum's senior curator of contemporary art, the works are 'primarily by artists living in remote, rural communities across the Western Desert, the Southern Desert, and Central Desert regions.'
Artists represented include well-known figures such as Ginger Riley Munduwalawala, Polly Napangardi, Gloria Petyarre, George Ward Tjungurrayi, and Paddy Fordham Wainburranga, alongside younger artists like Gunybi Ganambarr and Djambawa Marawlli.
'There are a lot of wonderful signs and symbols within these paintings,' continues DiQuinzio, 'and almost all of them relate to the creation stories or dreaming stories, as well as the environment or the country. Once you start looking at the paintings in greater detail, those signs and symbols begin to emerge, and you begin to understand the kind of iconography or symbology behind many of these paintings.'
'These works are not just beautiful works of art,' DiQuinzio says. 'They are vital expressions of ancestral knowledge that allow us to explore larger dialogues relating to contemporary art, abstraction, global Indigenous movements, and the environment.'
Eternal Signs: Indigenous Australian Art from the Kaplan and Levi Collection is on display through November 9, 2025 at the Nevada Museum of Art. nevadaart.org for information.
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Support for 'Arts on the Airwaves' comes from The Nevada Arts Council… a state agency that provides public funding and support to artists and organizations, that benefit Nevadans in cities and rural communities statewide. More at NVArtsCouncil.org.
