Mountain Devil Lizard Dreaming

This car door painting references Aboriginal body paint designs that convey a Dreamtime story about Mountain Devil Lizard. The story and designs are associated with the artist’s family, and they appear frequently in works by her and her sisters. Gloria Petyarr is a leading Aboriginal artist, member of a major artmaking family in Utopia, and a founding member of the Utopia Women’s Batik Group. Around 1990, Utopia artists began to paint parts of abandoned cars strewn across the local environment. In this remote location, towing defunct cars to scrapyards is often unprofitable. In 1989, the automobile company BMW commissioned the artist Michael Jagamara Nelson, from the Central Desert community of Papunya, to paint an art car as part of a prestigious series that also involved American and British artists Andy Warhol, Jenny Holzer, and David Hockney. Based on this project, advisors encouraged Utopia artists to paint car parts.