Emily Kame Kngwarreye

(1910-1996)

Awelye, c.1987

Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Rodney Gooch for the Utopia Batik at Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA), Alice Springs (label attached, cat. 706)
Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above c.1987

The pastoral lease defining the borders of Utopia was first drawn across the traditional lands of the Alyawarre and Anmatyerre people in 1927. The lease occupies over 1800 square kilometers of Central Australia desert country; endless plains sparsely marked with bush scrub, boulders and rocky outcrops. The main seasonal change brings the appearance of delicate wildflowers and fruits amongst the perennial spinifex. The community live in camps across the land. There is one shop, and one medical center.

Batiking was brought to the women in Utopia through a workshop by Suzie Bryce and Pitjantjatjara woman Yipati Williams in 1977 and quickly became a popular medium. Batik suits the community. It requires minimal technology and fits the sociable character of camp life. The work of drawing in hot wax and dyeing the fabric is done outdoors in groups of women and children. After dying the fabrics are draped across windbreaks or pinned to clotheslines made of sticks and string in the sun.

Most of the women who formed the Utopia Women's Batik Group never attended school or received formal training, but they were all accomplished in the practice of ceremonial arts, primarily body painting using earth pigments applied with fingers or typale (traditional brushes). The Utopia women were a special phenomenon as a women's collective — they started batiking almost a decade before women from other Central Australia groups began making art in their own right rather than assisting the men to make paintings.

One year before the Utopia women learned to batik, they played a key role in the 1979 Land Claim Hearing which resulted in the community gaining permanent legal title to the leasehold. They demonstrated their knowledge largely through performance of awelye (women's ceremonies). Throughout the eighty's batik has been part of their continued demonstration of knowledge of country and Dreamings.

The Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA) was formed in Alice Springs by two volunteers in 1980 with a directive to preserve, record and encourage Aboriginal culture in all contemporary forms of expression. It grew into a large organisation including a retail outlet, CAAMA Shop. In 1987 the shop manager, Rodney Gooch, started working with the women to promote and market their work. CAAMA Shop regularly delivered batiking supplies to the camps and collected the finished work to take back to Alice Springs to document and sell.

Possibilities of designs are endless. Many images can be generated from one part of a Dreaming story, or a single design can represent a Dreaming in its entirety. Many works of art deal with ceremony and some designs are the ritual property of specific clan groups or the individuals who compose them. Some designs are abbreviated versions of body designs or a depiction of bush tucker, some are abstractions. They largely encompass the perspective of women.

Amy Thomson de Zylva

We acknowledge the research and scholarly history of the batik movement provided by Anne Marie Brody, in Utopia: A Picture Story : 88 Silk Batiks from the Robert Holmes À Court Collection, Heytesbury Holdings, Perth, 1990