An exhibition from Australia, which reveals the aboriginal history of the world's longest stock route through the deserts of Western Australia, has gone on display here.
Titled 'Yiwarra Kuju: The Canning Stock Route' the show provides a window to the artistic, cultural and natural worlds of the Aboriginal people of Australia's Western Desert.
The artists draw on both traditional art conventions and new figurative styles to recount their sacred and secular life experiences through art.
Nearly 70 artists traveled along the 1850-kilometer stock route, an authorised thoroughfare for the walking of domestic livestock such as sheep or cattle from one location to another, on a six-week intensive engagement with their country between July and August 2007.
Over 100 artworks were produced during the expedition, and a selection of these are now on display at the DLF Place Saket until June 22 this year.
The art of the Canning Stock Route has its origins in the traditional sacred art of Aboriginal people
Prior to Western contact, most art was produced in ceremonial contexts as body decoration, sand sculptures, ceremonial objects and rock art. Paints, made from ochres and charcoal, were augmented by the use of bird feathers and down.
The iconography of desert art is complex. Artists combine symbols, such as concentric circles, bars, footprints, horseshoe shapes and lines, to convey sacred stories.
The tradition of ceremonial art, and the rules associated with its creation, continued in the Western Desert until well into the 1970s, when a new art movement developed out of a growing Western market for Aboriginal desert art.
