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Rivalling the dots

By Tim Lloyd

17 January 2005 - Exciting changes in art are sweeping the Anangu-Pitjantjatjara lands.
It is as if the traditional Aboriginal country of South Australia's Far North West has had its arts blinkers removed.

A whole new wave of works that speak of individual artists' inspirationhas overtaken the institutionalised art and crafts that the region hasbeen best known for.

Artists are showing signs of an art movement rivalling the more famous Papunya Tula artists of the Western Desert.

Non-traditional Aboriginal art is well established in the A-P lands. Ernabella, the original settlement in the area, has been prominent asan arts centre going back almost 60 years.

Ernabella concentrated on a range of crafts and became famous for increasingly rococo design motifs known as walka, and for colourfu lbatik techniques of dyeing. It was completely eclipsed by acrylic dot painting, introduced in the Western Desert, 500km
farther north, firing up an international arts phenomenon, with works fetching up to
$750,000.

But two years ago, the arts centres in the A-P lands began to unwind their crafts-based approach and look at ways of encouraging more individual expression.

Tracey Lea, an artist with long-standing connections to the area, was asked to conduct workshops by co-ordinators of the veteran arts centre, Hilary Furlong and Beverley Peacock.

Art Gallery of SA curator of Australian art Tracey Lock-Weir takes up the story: "Ernabella had been locked into a fixed style for many, many years and Lea encouraged artists to really loosen up their painting motifs.

"And because she managed to obtain the confidence of the older women, they were able to integrate their authoritative creation stories.Their works became quite gestural and quite powerful."

Ms Lock-Weir says that while Papunya Tula demonstrates a consistent, but evolving style, there has been far more diversity in the A-P lands.

"These artists are producing some wonderful work and I think it'sfantastic," she says. "As with any community, there are certainindividual artists whose work outshines the others. I
feel there are someoutstanding artists and others who are simply enjoying themselves."

Her views are echoed by Flinders University Art Museum director Gail Greenwood, who says there have been huge changes to art from the area. Ms Greenwood says it started when the four arts centres in the A-P lands decided to form an umbrella organisation, Ku
Arts, to introduce new art forms and develop new markets.

"It has broken away from some of the traditions they have been bound under for the past 30-odd years," she says.

"It is pleasing that the artists are now following their own styles."

Gail Greenwood and Tracey Lock-Weir were among the art curators onan expedition through the A-P lands, accompanied by art collectors and dealers.

Each arts centre has a different character.

In Ernabella's picturesque creekbed setting high in the Musgrave Ranges, artists have branched out into painting on canvas and on ceramics. At Kaltjiti Arts Centre in Fregon, farther south, paintings seemed of more uneven quality, but the subtlety of colours has vastly increased. The place is being transformed by Tali Tali Pompey, a woman in her 80s who is producing highly prized works of mingled colours.

As we arrived, a tour party was leaving clutching most of Tali Tali's recent output. The group had flown into Fregon from Sydney in a charter plane, bought the works and were headed back to Sydney.

Buying in the A-P lands guarantees that proceeds find their way to the artist and subsidises the operation of the arts centres.

Indulkana's Iwantja Arts and Crafts, just 8km off the main Adelaide to Alice Springs road, has most visitors and sales and so has undergone the least changes to its arts output in recent years.

It is full of crafts and some new paintings, but possibly its most important works are prints on paper from the early 1980s.

The touring curators and dealers were most impressed by paintings at Minymaku (or women's) Arts Centre at Amata, which lies south of the border from Uluru.

Artists there used to make crafts for Uluru until Tracey Lea established an arts centre in 1997, run for two years by Canberra Art School-trained Sara Twigg-Patterson, who is and experienced in marketing.

Twigg-Patterson managed to show the artists of the community that high-quality work is rewarded with high prices - three or four times those of just two years ago.

And, for the first time in the A-P lands, she has persuaded men to paint their creation stories.

Source: The Advertiser

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