As a title, Classics From the Golden Age of Utopia feels like something Bill Collins might have dreamt up for a festival of old Hollywood movies. I can almost see him now: “Don’t make plans for Saturday night! Stay right by your TV set, because I’ll be showing Emily Kame Kngwarreye and Gloria Petyarre!”
It may sound hokey, but there’s a serious message being sent by the title of the current show at the S.H. Ervin Gallery. It’s telling us there was a time in the 1990s when Utopia was home to some of Australia’s most important living artists. The best work that emerged from this tiny settlement in the centre of the continent was jaw-dropping and is now selling for huge sums. In the case of Emily Kame Kngwarreye (c. 1910-1996), for millions.
There are roughly 50 works in a show that has been assembled at short notice when a gap opened up in the gallery’s program. What’s surprising is how well the exhibition lives up to its name. It also serves as a corrective to some of the attempts being made to rewrite history in the service of present-day interests, as we find Utopia being formalised as an “art centre”, in the manner of so many other communities.