Bardon has largely remained in popular consciousness as the synonymous hero and martyr of the art movement’s origin story. But a new biography is unravelling the myth, and the madness, behind the tale
Like many foundation stories, the white Australian narrative about the birth of the globally celebrated Western Desert Aboriginal “dot painting” movement is steeped in myth.
For decades it has gone like this. In 1971 a young, eccentric middle-class art teacher from Sydney, Geoffrey Bardon, arrives in the remote assimilationist Aboriginal settlement of Papunya, 250km west of Alice Springs.