Showcasing Dreams of the Aborigine in West Hollywood

Massachusetts native Carol Lopes is a big name Down Under. She’s a top model, has been the host of several Australian TV shows and has amassed one of the largest collections of Australian Aboriginal art in the world. Now she’s moved back to the United States to open Los Angeles’ first gallery devoted to Australian Aboriginal art.

Lopes opened the Caz Gallery in West Hollywood Thursday with “Dreams and Life,” a display of more than 200 pieces of Aboriginal art, including works in acrylic on canvas, as well as sculptures, pottery, sand paintings and fabric.

Three of the Aboriginal artists whose work is being shown flew to Los Angeles for the opening, including Bobby Nganmira and Thompson Yulidjirri, who are painting a cave face that is being constructed in the gallery. Nganmira and Yulidjirri, according to Lopes, are the last two practitioners of this particular art form.

“Once they’re gone,” she said, “the art forms themselves are effectively gone. The elders are trying hard to get the kids interested, but the culture is disappearing.”

The Caz Gallery (named for the Australian nickname for Carol) will be two galleries: one devoted solely to Aboriginal art, the other a contemporary gallery.

The Caz Gallery; 8715 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood; (213) 652-6952; 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

BACK TO THE STONE AGE: Lindsey Loch is a Los Angeles artist whose work has appeared in newspapers and on record albums and has created the store facade mural for New Stone Age Gallery, where a mixed-media show runs through Oct. 7. Loch is showing wood-relief paintings, linoleum prints, ceramics and jewelry. New Stone Age Gallery; 8407 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles; (213) 658-5969; 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

OSKAR DEAREST: An exhibit of films and paintings by the late Oskar Fischinger opens Tuesday at the Tobey C. Moss Gallery, continuing through Oct. 18. Fischinger, an avant-garde German film maker who fled Berlin for Los Angeles in 1936, began painting between assignments at movie studios. His paintings deal with space and three-dimensionality. Tobey C. Moss Gallery; 7321 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles; (213) 933-5523; 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.