Major exhibition on the Canning Stock Route opens at National Museum

The National Museum of Australia in partnership with the arts group FORM presents Yiwarra Kuju: The Canning Stock Route, a remarkable collection of paintings and stories which reclaims the Aboriginal history of the world's longest stock route through the deserts of Western Australia.

The Canning Stock Route, an ultimately unsuccessful cattle track stretching from Halls Creek to Wiluna, is usually presented as a white man's story. The exhibition Yiwarra Kuju: The Canning Stock Route restates the Aboriginal history of the stock route by telling the story through Aboriginal eyes and voices.

The art and objects were produced by the Canning Stock Route Project, a four year program developed by FORM, an independent arts organisation based in Perth, which involved artists, traditional custodians and emerging Aboriginal curators and filmmakers.

"The Canning Stock Route is a place where Indigenous and non-Indigenous histories intersect," said Andrew Sayers, Director of the National Museum of Australia.

"Viewing the works in this exhibition makes us recognise that this story goes back much further and is held firmly in the hearts and minds of the Aboriginal people whose country lies in and around the corridor of the Canning Stock Route," said Mr Sayers.

The relationship between the National Museum and FORM represents a close collaboration, one in which the research done by FORM has come together with the resources of the Museum to present this exhibition.

Yiwarra Kuju:The Canning Stock Route is a free exhibition which features 127 paintings, cultural objects, documents and a remarkable new media work which traces the Canning Stock Route with touch-screen access to historical and contemporary detail, paintings and cultural works and a rich oral and visual record.

Yiwarra Kuju: The Canning Stock Route will be on display at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra from 30 July 2010 until 26 January 2011.

For interviews, images and more information please contact Dennis Grant on 02 6208 5351, 0409 916 481; Caroline Vero on 02 6208 5338, 0438 620 710 or media@nma.gov.au