Crossing Time: Highlights from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Collection

Crossing Time combines works created from the mid-twentieth century to today, and considers Aboriginal concepts of the past, present and future as interconnected.

The display is shaped by the Art Gallery of South Australia’s progressive acquisition history and features many of the Gallery’s earliest Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander acquisitions, including Western Arrernte artist Albert Namatjira’s watercolour of ancient ancestral country, Illum-Baura (Haasts Bluff), Central Australia. Purchased by the Gallery in 1939 this was the first work by an Aboriginal artist to be purchased by a state art institution. Other highlights include the extraordinary bark painting Dead Man, c. 1968, by western Arnhem Land artist Lofty Bardayal Nadjarmerrek, and the monumental painting Man’s Love Story, 1978, by Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri.