Australian Aboriginal art represents the oldest living art tradition in the world today. The original forms of Aboriginal art are over 40,000 years old, and include rock carvings, body painting and sand painting. Art has always been an integral component of Australian Aboriginal culture, uniting past and present, people and land, and natural and supernatural worlds.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal art has become a prominent component of the Australian national identity in recent decades. The prominence of Aboriginal art is due to the motivation and effort of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, particularly painters, who have introduced the Australian and international art public to the indigenous cultures of Australia. Australian indigenous artists have had a significant impact on the international art world with major exhibitions around the globe.
While Aboriginal painting traditions are tens of thousands of years old, it was not until the 1970s that Australian Aboriginal artists began to receive widespread recognition by the European/Western art public. The first and perhaps most famous contemporary Aboriginal art movement was that of the Australian Western Desert artists of Papunya (Papunya Tula).
The Papunya Tula style evolved from traditional Western Desert styles of body and sand painting. When Papunya schoolteacher Geoffrey Bardon introduced paints and canvas to the community, many artists adapted traditional techniques to the new Western media. In time, a thriving art movement flourished throughout the entire Central and Western Desert region as individuals and communities committing their intricate, ancient stories and iconography to canvas, thus contributing to an arts industry that today generates around $200 million a year nationally.
Indigenous art has embraced technology and new media, and there are today many online galleries and exhibitions of indigenous art available on the internet. These websites have enhanced awareness of Aboriginal and Torres Trait Islander art and increased its popularity internationally.