This clip from a Film Australia documentary is about the Aboriginal women of Utopia Station near Alice Springs in Central Australia, who run their own artists' program.

In 1973 a government-sponsored program led to artist Jenny Green arriving in Utopia to teach the women the art of batik.

In this clip the women are shown painting and dyeing batik. They talk about the plants and animals which inspire the motifs used in their designs.

It's worth looking out for internationally renowned artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye in this clip – she is wearing a red scarf. Though known more as a painter, Kngwarreye began her practice making batiks.

Despite the remoteness of their community, the beautiful art made by the women of Utopia is bought by collectors both within Australia and internationally. 

Batik is a method of decorating textiles by creating designs in hot wax to fabric, followed by various dyes. The process may be repeated several times before removing the wax in boiling water. 

Wax-resist dyeing of fabric is an ancient art form. It existed in Egypt in the 4th Century BCE, and was most highly developed on the island of Java, Indonesia.

Excerpt from Women of Utopia, 1984 – Film Australia Collection.

You can stream Women of Utopia in full as part of the Buwindja collection on NFSA Player.

STREAM Women of utopia

Emily Kame Kngwarreye (approximately 1910–1996) was an Anmatyerre artist and elder. She is one of Australia's most important contemporary artists.

She began painting when she was 79 years old having already worked with sand, ceremonial body painting (Awelye), song, ceremony and batik designs on silk. Over a period of eight years she went on to create more than 3,000 individual paintings. In 2007, Kngwarreye's Earth's Creation became the first work by a female Australian artist and the first Aboriginal artwork to be sold for more than one million dollars.

Although she spent her adult life in Utopia in the Northern Territory, her clan Country was Alhalkere. Her Dreaming and the Law from this Country was the source of her creative work and her knowledge. Whenever she was asked to explain her paintings she would describe her work as 'whole lot', regardless of the style:

Awelye (my Dreaming), Arlatyeye (pencil yam), Arkerrthe (mountain devil lizard), Ntange (grass seed), Tingu (Dreamtime pup), Ankerre (emu), Intekwe (favourite food of emus, a small plant), Atnwerle (green bean), and Kame (yam seed). That’s what I paint, whole lot.

In this clip from the documentary Art + Soul: Dreams and Nightmares, Kngwarreye paints the roots of the kam, or pencil yam. She is named after 'Kam', saying 'I am kam now'. Art curator Hetti Perkins says her batik work shows all the hallmarks of her later work with paint, showing a 'gestural, spontaneous and even accidental freedom of expression'.

Linguist Jenny Green, who knew and worked with Kngwarreye, says that she believed that the painting had helped protect her country from threats such as uranium mining. Green says Kngwarreye 'felt that by exercising this right to make images related to that place, perhaps in the same way as you would sing the songs or do the ceremonies, that was being a good citizen in her country terms – being a good custodian. She thought that one of the reasons that her work was so popular was because it was from that country. She thought that was one of the keys to the extraordinary success that she had.'

Notes by Beth Taylor

Filmmaker and photographer Tracey Moffatt is one of Australia's most nationally and internationally successful artists, having held around 100 solo exhibitions of her work in Europe, the United States and Australia.

Her films Nightcries – A Rural Tragedy (1989) and BeDevil (1993) have screened at the Cannes Film Festival and other prominent festivals around the world. In 2017 Moffatt was selected to take part in the Venice Biennale with her exhibition MY HORIZON.

In this clip from the 1988 documentary Boomalli: Five Koori Artists, Moffatt talks about art and politics. We see some of her photographic work and her short experimental film Nice Coloured Girls (Tracey Moffatt, Australia, 1987). Moffatt talks about growing up as 'the only Aboriginal kid in the school photograph' in the suburbs of Brisbane. She says:

In the different mediums I work in, photography and film, I'm basically concerned with contemporary Aboriginal society. Be it people living in a traditional way or living in the cities and ... I'm wanting to depart from a documentary or ethnographic mode. I just feel that nowadays people tune out when they think 'here we go again, another predicable documentary about Aborigines. 

Moffatt shows photographs from her recent collaboration with women practising the art of basket weaving in Arnhem Land. She says the future for herself and other Aboriginal artists is 'brilliant, especially for those who don't expect the world to come to them, simply because they're Aboriginal and it's owed to them'. 

Moffatt defends her right to mix art and politics and talks about her opposition to flying the Aboriginal flag on First Fleet reenactment ships. Moffatt was in Portsmouth, England with an Aboriginal arts festival at the time the ships were setting forth to sail to Australia. We see news footage of her talking to media while she is being arrested by English police.

Excerpt from Boomalli: Five Koori Artists, 1988 – Film Australia Collection.

Notes by Beth Taylor

The Hermannsburg Potters are a group of Aranda women in Central Australia who formed an arts centre in Hermannsburg (Ntaria), Northern Territory. The women-only Hermannsburg Potters started in 1990 when senior law man Nashasson Ungwanaka invited ceramicist Naomi Sharp to teach members of the community.

Hermannsburg has a rich history as one of the birthplaces of contemporary Aboriginal art. It was here that the watercolour art movement started and where internationally recognised artist Albert Namatjira painted. 

The artists create beautifully painted pots, often with sculptured lids. The artists draw on many influences, but the pots strongly reflect the distinctive visual Aboriginal culture of Central Australia.

The subtitles in this silent clip provide an essential description of what we are seeing. The images of the surrounding landscape, including the flyover at the start, are beautiful and give us a wonderful idea of the environment and inspiration for the artists.

Footage of the community and the women creating their pots is shot and edited sensitively. It doesn't feel like we are intruding on their lives or practice.

Northern Territory Art Gallery Curator Franchesca Cubillo talks about the life of acclaimed Arrente artist Albert Namatjira (1902–59) and his citizenship granted in 1957.

This clip comes from a 2007 Talkback Classroom forum on ‘Indigenous representation’. The students participating were NT Year 12 students Brendon Kassman, Danielle Lede and Esmeralda Stephenson from Casuarina Senior College, Darwin.

The learning journey involved students exploring the collection of Aboriginal art and material culture at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin and interviewing senior curator Franchesca Cubillo. 

Talkback Classroom was a forum program run by the Education section of the National Museum of Australia. At each forum a panel of three secondary students, selected from schools Australia wide, interviewed a leading decision-maker. They also participated in a ‘learning journey’, researching the issue being explored by the forum and interviewing relevant people in the community. 

This project was developed in partnership with the National Museum of Australia.

This clip from Aboriginal Video Magazine (1986) shows two renowned Western Desert artists, George Bush Tjangala and Don Tjungurrayi.

The Western Desert art movement has become one of Australia’s most recognisable art forms. 

Paintings were traditonally created on the ground using sand, coloured stones, feathers and plants but, in 1971, school teacher Geoffrey Bardon encouraged some of the men to paint a blank school wall using acrylic paints.

This created great interest in the community and led to the formation of the Papunya Tula Artists Cooperative in 1972. Since then, members of the community have been painting traditional designs using acrylic paints on boards and canvas which have been exhibited and collected internationally. 

In this clip, shots of an Indigenous art gallery located on a colourful, busy urban street are starkly contrasted with the dry, sparse, brown palette of the open desert area where the paintings of the Papunya Tula artists are created. A straightforward explanatory voice-over introduces the artists, their traditional style, subject matter and materials used.

We learn that some of their paintings have featured in art shows and won prizes. This information, combined with images of the artists at work in their remote setting, conveys a real sense of achievement when you consider how the artists have managed to bridge the divide between their traditional culture and the commercial art world.  

Arone Meeks is a Kuku Midigi man who grew up in Far North Queensland. He is a founding member of the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative:

I believe that art is a language for interpreting who you are and I can't find any other satisfaction than painting. I have a natural need to interpret what I feel and see.

Meeks is wary of using the designs of others so instead explores the bush and his dreams to create his own language of symbols.

Excerpt from Boomalli: Five Koori Artists, 1988 – Film Australia Collection.

Bundjalung woman Bronwyn Bancroft is a founding member of the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative.

Bancroft started work as a fashion designer and in 1985 established a shop called Designer Aboriginals, selling fabrics made by Aboriginal artists including herself, before branching out into other areas of artistic practice. She has also been an arts administrator. 

The drive behind my work is totally to see Aboriginal people accepted for their creative ability and to be accepted for their business initiatives and to see autonomy for Aboriginal people in the division of finance and small businesses.

Excerpt from Boomalli: Five Koori Artists, 1988 – Film Australia Collection.

Ngemba artist Jeffrey Samuels is an illustrator, designer, mixed-media artist and printmaker. Samuels is a founding member of the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative.

Even though I do not paint in traditional form, I am still an Aboriginal artist. I paint about issues that concern Aboriginal culture and Aboriginal people.

Excerpt from Boomalli: Five Koori Artists, 1988 – Film Australia Collection.

This story from NITV News in 2016 shows Northern Territory artist Harold Thomas, the designer of the Aboriginal flag, receiving the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award for his work 'Tribal Abduction'.

Thomas explains that the work represents the removal of children from country and that it reflects his own experience and that of his family.

Guest writer Cheree Toka, Kamilaroi yinarr (woman), entrepreneur and activist reflects on the story: 'While the painting was incredibly well received, this recognition was also tinged with sadness for our people. That we should win a prize for a portrait of our lives that was laced with sadness and cruelty is a raw reminder of why we still feel so strongly about our past.'

Other artists featured include Betty Kuntiwa Pumani and Ishmael Marika. The bulletin was broadcast live on 5 August 2016 from Darwin Museum and Art Gallery for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards.

The reporter is Ella Archibald-Binge. Anchorperson is Natalie Ahmat.

Notes by Beth Taylor

In this excerpt from Art + Soul Episode 3: Bitter and Sweet, Mervyn Bishop talks about his most famous photograph – Prime Minister Gough Whitlam symbolically pouring sand into the hand of traditional landowner Vincent Lingiari in 1975.

The episode is narrated by Hetti Perkins and was directed by Warwick Thornton.

Mervyn Bishop: The Exhibition was on display at the NFSA in Canberra from 5 March to 4 October 2021.

Joie Boulter speaks about having Dion’s artwork applied to T-shirts as a way to raise funds. We see examples of Dion’s artwork now applied to T-shirts. All royalties raised from the merchandise are put into a trust fund for Dion. We hear from Dion’s family, grandfather John Beasley and Gloria Beasley, Dion’s aunty. Summary by Romaine Moreton.

As Dion is drawing dogs, Joie Boulter tells us that Dion is going through a phase where all the dogs he draws are angry. Dion’s grandpa John Beasley talks about Dion’s drawings, and how he draws dogs in all different situations. We see examples of Dion’s drawings. Summary by Romaine Moreton.

A brush pushes dots against an all black canvas. Trevor Nickolls tells us about the influences that shape his work. Nickolls refers to the Western machinery and Indigenous cosmology known as the Dreaming. Summary by Romaine Moreton.

Erica Izett and Tim Acker manage the Balgo art centre in northern Western Australia. Some of Australia’s best Aboriginal artists work in the Balgo area. They describe the elements in Aboriginal art. Summary by Danien Parer.

Indigenous paintings are maps of the artists’ country. They trace the land’s topography, but also contain personal history, mythology and Dreaming tracks. Aboriginal paintings feature maps of a specific area, mythology, personal history and storytelling. Summary by Damien Parer.

Benny Tjapaltarri and Mick Ngamurarri tell us the significance of the Dreaming, and how the Dreaming ancestors created the landscape. Summary by Romaine Moreton.

Banduk Marika walks amongst the Sydney population. She speaks about the use of Dreaming symbols and the restriction that occurs as a result of each family member being responsible for different symbols and stories. Summary by Romaine Moreton.

The story of Yolngu artist David Malangi and how one of his works was used as the design for the new Australian one dollar note that was introduced with decimal currency in February 1966.

The artwork depicts the 'mortuary feast' of one of the artist's creation ancestors, Gunmirringu, the great ancestral hunter.

The Manharrngu people attribute this story as the origin of their mortuary rites.

From the Film Australia Collection. Made by the Commonwealth Film Unit.

In 1963 the Aboriginal Elders at Yirrkala presented the Federal Government with a bark painting, the title deed to their country.

This clip comes from a 2007 Talkback Classroom forum on ‘Indigenous representation’. The students participating were NT Year 12 students Brendon Kassman, Danielle Lede and Esmeralda Stephenson from Casuarina Senior College, Darwin.

The learning journey involved students exploring the collection of Aboriginal art and material culture at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin and interviewing senior curator Franchesca Cubillo. 

Talkback Classroom was a forum program run by the Education section of the National Museum of Australia. At each forum a panel of three secondary students, selected from schools Australia wide, interviewed a leading decision-maker. They also participated in a ‘learning journey’, researching the issue being explored by the forum and interviewing relevant people in the community. 

This project was developed in partnership with the National Museum of Australia.