NEW YORK – An exhibition featuring six spectacular works of contemporary art by leading Australian Aboriginal artists will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning Aug. 11. “On Country: Australian Aboriginal Art from the Kaplan-Levi Gift” explores aspects of nature and the elements—the flow of water, the shine or shimmer of rain or lightning—and its relationship to time and the ancestral landscape.

Monumental in both scale and ambition, the paintings are part of a 2016 gift that introduces an electrifying new dimension into the Met’s representation of global contemporary art. Mastering dynamic resonance, or shimmer, and finding ways to capture it on canvas is a highly valued visual effect in Australian Aboriginal art, and one on which these Aboriginal artists have built international reputations.

The artists featured in the exhibition are Doreen Reid Nakamarra (b. Warburton, c. 1955–2009), Dorothy Napangardi (b. Yuendumu, c. 1950–2013), Kathleen Petyarre (b. Utopia, c. 1940), Abie Loy Kemarre (b. Utopia, c. 1972), and Gunybi Ganambarr (b. Yirrkala, 1973).

Highlights of the works on view include Napangardi’s dynamic Karntakurlangu Jukurrpa (2002), which features a delicate grid of intersecting lines whose lively proliferation evokes spiritual depth and vitality; and Kathleen Petyarre’s Sandhills in Atnangkere Country (1999) and Mountain Devil Lizard Dreaming – Sandhill Country (after Hailstorm) (2000), which showcase the artist’s highly distinctive layering technique, in which multiple fields of intricate dots work as visual metaphors to actively invoke and stimulate epic dreaming narratives.