Land & Country

When we talk about Country, we don't just mean land in the way it might be thought of elsewhere - soil, property, a place on a map. Country is where everything begins. It holds our identity, our stories, our lore and our sense of who we are. You can't really separate an Aboriginal person from their Country, because in a real sense, we belong to it, rather than the other way around.

Each of us is connected to a particular piece of Country through our family line, and with that connection comes both knowledge and responsibility, the obligation to care for that place, to know its stories, and to pass that knowledge on.

Our family's Country is Utopia, in the Northern Territory, about 270km north-east of Alice Springs, on the edge of the Western Desert, on the traditional lands of the Eastern Anmatyerre and Alyawarre people. We are Alyawarre and Anmatyerre ourselves - these are our own language groups, not just the region's. It's harsh country.

Summers reach well over 40 degrees and winter nights bring frost. But after rain, the whole landscape changes wildflowers bloom across the spinifex and the bush comes alive. That contrast, between the dry and the bloom, runs right through our family's paintings.

In the 1970s and 80s, many of our families who had been moved away from their traditional land during the missions and station years made their way back to Country - a period known as the homelands movement. Coming home to Country after being away from it sparked an incredible creative outpouring across the desert. Artists who'd painted for years suddenly found something new once they were back on the land their stories actually belonged to.

That return to Country is part of why Utopia art looks the way it does, it isn't abstract decoration. It's a direct, living connection between an artist and the specific ground they're from, painted from memory, from walking it, from belonging to it.