Word: papunya
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When Philip Batty first came to Papunya, he was met with an almost utopian vision. It was 1977, and Batty had come to work as an art teacher at the government settlement in Central Australia; to his joy, artists had taken over the town, some even gathering in his front yard to paint. "There were few places in Papunya that had front lawns and I inherited the policeman's house," recalls Batty, now senior curator for Central Australian Collections at Museum Victoria. "And people like Clifford Possum and Johnny Warangkula used to come around and paint." He was met with...
...amazing story of cultural survival, with traditional lifestyles often being maintained on the earnings from art production. "Aboriginal art has been the one shining light that people have been able to refer to when they talk about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander achievements," says Paul Sweeney, manager of Papunya Tula Artists, the oldest and most successful of the desert art centers, "and it's getting knocked about a bit at the moment." Industry observers blame a small number of rogue traders working outside the art-center system; others cite skyrocketing auction prices; some accuse the artists themselves. Says Sarra...
...Back in Papunya, the Pintupi men were famous for their old red truck, which kept breaking down in the desert - "it was to these sometimes desperate, instinctively nomadic people a manifestation of the traveling principle," writes Bardon, who died in May 2003, in a recently published history of the movement (see box, next page). These days their vehicle for survival is the dialysis machine. Because of poverty and poor diet, the Pintupi have one of the highest rates of kidney failure in the country. "Our rates of dialysis are 40 times the national average," says Dr. Paul Rivalland, who started...
...Kintore? "It's a really simple thing to say," said Toyne at the opening. "It's been a very big battle to make it come true." While a dialysis machine can cost as little as $A40,000 - roughly the price of an off-road vehicle or a good Papunya Tula painting - nursing overheads and the need for water filters make it an expensive item in the desert. But, circulated among a group of well-connected Papunya Tula supporters, from AGNSW curator Hetti Perkins to Tim Kingender, the Aboriginal art specialist at Sotheby's auction house, the idea took hold...
...show, with 35 Aboriginal works donated by collectors, artists and dealers. Central were four large new collaborative paintings by the men and women of Kintore and Kiwirrkura, a Pintupi settlement 200 km to the west, across the West Australian border. These came together as quickly and spontaneously as the Papunya movement had 20 years earlier. "We just threw the paints out," recalls Sweeney, "and they went for it." So, too, did bidders on the auction night, including businessman Kerry Stokes, who paid $A300,000 for the Kiwirrkura men's painting. All up, $A1.1 million was raised...