Shaping The Landscape: Spirit Figures From Northern Australia, D’Lan Contemporary New York’s first exhibition of 2025, will present thirty-one figurative sculptures from the Martin Rae Collection, one of the most significant and comprehensive collections of its kind outside of Australia.

This exhibition will mark the first time the collection – which includes several pieces that have been exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art – has been shown in its entirety. Representing over 50 years of discerning collecting, the exhibition will bring together the sculptural traditions of three major art producing regions of Northern Australia: the Tiwi Islands, Western Arnhem Land and North-East Arnhem Land.

The New York born collector and his Australian wife, who met and married in the 1960s, made their first purchase of a woomera on a family visit to Australia shortly after their marriage. He has said that, if it were not for that trip – which sparked a life-long passion for Australian First Nations art and culture – his collection ‘might never have existed.’

Aboriginal people in Australia have carved and decorated three-dimensional wooden forms for tens of thousands of years. Created primarily for use in ceremony, these poles, ornaments, weapons, and ritual objects relate to the religious lives of their makers. Carved representations of the human form were first observed in the early twentieth century by missionaries in North-East Arnhem Land. Since then, motivated by their contact with balanda (outsiders), various cultural groups across Northern Australia have sculpted figurative forms to trade and sell. Many of these figures are visual manifestations of spirit beings. Some depict specific creation ancestors central to the respective origins of each cultural group: others represent spirits of the deceased. The figurative sculptures of Northern Australia have long been an area of intense interest and collecting focus for Australian and international institutions and private collectors alike.

D’Lan Contemporary is honored to present this important private collection in its entirety for the first time and to share these works, on behalf of the collector, with audiences at their gallery in New York.

Shaping The Landscape: Spirit Figures From Northern Australia
February 6 – March 14, 2025
D’Lan Contemporary New York
25 East 73rd Street, NY 10021
Video by Bower Blue and @gd.content