Desert Mob

Araluen Alice Springs 

Sept 2016

After being given 8 days to submit a tender/quote to a major national arts Org for a prestigious position next year, with notification set for 1 week after closing date and then waiting (waiting) 6 weeks for a phone call informing me that I was unsuccessful, I felt a little used up. On the back of this disappointment my friend Stephen Williamson, Curator at Araluen Arts Centre in Alice Springs offered me work hanging the 26th Desert Mob Exhibition. I have been to a few of these, over a period of many years, and after having experienced the excitement of the 2015 25th Anniversary I jumped at the chance to escape into the Centre and away from the bureaucratic maze that had recently embroiled me.

I arrived on a Wednesday, started work on the Thursday and worked for 10 steady days installing the exhibition. Stephen, with help from Tim Chatwin, had already done the main curatorial work in that the 253 works from 31 art centres had been laid out in their respective zones. The range of work, from recycled work gloves modelled into cockatoos from Greenbush Art Group based at the Alice Springs Correctional Centre, ceramics from Ernabella, Hermannsburg  and Santa Teresa, the magnificent history work, ‘Early Days Family’ from Tjanpi Weavers and Warakurna Artists, the innocence and brilliance of the work produced at various art centres based in Alice Springs, the continually evolving painting produced in various remote desert communities, to recent photos and even for the 1st time a digital projection was hugely varied and complex. It is a testament to Stephen’s belief, eye and empathy that this potential cacophony was ordered spacious and inviting.

The success stories for 2016 were pretty obvious as I adjusted my eye to the assault of colour, texture and shear scale. It is a continual surprise to me how art centres on a roll will have multiple artists working at sizes close to 2m x 2m and pulling off individually proficient, honest and at times masterful works. The real standouts from this year have been several of the APY (Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara) desert community art centres in the far north of South Australia. For consistency of scale and quality the stand out for me was Kaljiti in Fregon, the site of local tragedy and national focus earlier this year when a white nurse was killed and left on the side of the road. The response of the art centre denizens to this was 2 large exhibitions, one at Raft Artspace in Alice and the other at Paul Johnstone Gallery in Darwin. The works in Desert Mob were a continuation of this response, neither literal nor frenetic but more feats of strength and positivity in the face of what must have been much heartache. For individual adventure, variety of theme and paint use there was no going past Iwantja Arts based at Indulkana in far north South Australia. From Vincent Namatjira’s playful, perceptive and remarkably accurate portraits of the leaders of the 7 APY communities, the ebullience and lyricism of Tiger Yaltangki, the story pictures of Jimmy Pompey, Kaylene Whiskey and David Frank to the works on paper by Peter Mungkuri and Alec Baker. These last works, made with ink and acrylic on paper were where I found myself again and again travelling across country and mark, mark and country on this emotional journey.

This last work was one of many on paper from various communities submitted this year. Papaya Tjupi, Tjali Arts at Amata, Mimili Maku Arts in Mimili and as mentioned Iwantja Arts. There is also the radical marriage of digital photography, burnt wire dotting and installation by Robert Fielding from Mimili Maku. There is an obvious resilience and practicality to the contemporary tradition of artists acrylic paint on Belgian linen out bush, as you can drive a truck over one, have dogs sleep on them and they dry quick enough to avoid getting flyblown and dust laden. But these new phenomena suggests a fearless willingness to experiment, and augers well to a future where a lot of the elder artists are ageing and means and methods need to be found to engage the next generation in this ingrained belief in the power of stories and the importance of telling them. I can see hip hop, video, digital media being worked on in the same creative environment as the traditional painting centres and look forward to the results.

But again the most striking phenomena, plainly evident in the exhibition, is the effect of the Art Centre Coordinators and Managers on the progress, ebullience and innate creativity of the participating artists. What is obvious is when and where these facilitators are just that, facilitators, and when and where the hand of interventionist technologies, concepts and direction setting tend to take over and the artists become craftspeople singing to someone else's song sheet. In some ways all the technologies we see on the walls, floor and display stands in Desert Mob are introduced technologies; even Tjanpi Weavers, who use what appears to be traditional skills and materials, are producing non-traditional products effected by facilitators. So how does it happen that in some instances great art occurs, given that the technologies of production are introduced, that the centres are often funded spaces and that as Richard Bell’s theorem states ‘Aboriginal Art, its a white thing’. How is it that Vincent Namatjira’sportraits just ring true, that the drawings of Alec Baker are as much maps of mind, maps of country, maps of plastic discovery, that a dot painting by Taylor Cooper can look so distinctly his, soaring in song, that a simple pot by Kunmanara Ingkatji, the last one he made before he died can sit on a plinth and be a continuing surprise and that a group picture by the women of Spinifex be like a claim, a document, a journey and be at the same time be a plastic statement. I don't know the answer to this, but the commitment and work of some art centre facilitators seem to allow individual artists to achieve greatness. How this happens is not a mystery; there are people who understand this, and can make it happen again and again; the real hope is that it continues and these quiet generators of the art centres spread their knowledge and understanding to others and that this unique phenomenon continues on into the future.