Vivien Anderson 6 day Central Desert Art Tour
Please be aware that access to some communities may change due to circumstances beyond our control. We will endeavour to replace the destination with another similar or rearrange the itinerary as necessary.
Please call me at any time should you have any questions:
Tracey Vince
Director, Aboriginal Art Connections
0417 844 577
Vivien Anderson
Director, Vivien Anderson Gallery
Specialist Chaperone
0419 894 429
Price is inclusive of all permits, accommodation, travel while on tour, meals and beverages except for alcohol, from Alice Springs, ending in Uluruwith two escorts throughout. Domestic flights to Alice Springs and return from Uluru are at your own expense and arrangements.
Not included in the cost: Alcoholic beverages, items of a personal nature- phone calls, internet etc
Sunday 25 May 2014
Arrival into Alice Springs and transfer to your accommodation this evening. Further details will be advised once we have your flight information from you.
The group will meet this evening for welcome drinks and dinner. Tonight will be the first night of the tour, a time to get to know each other over dinner and to learn more about the places, art works and artists we will experience over the next week.
This will be an adventurous few days with the opportunity to experience what very few Australians can by visiting small, very remote Aboriginal communities in Central Australia. There’s the chance to meet some wonderful warm people, see fascinating landscapes from the air and to immerse yourself in wonderful contemporary works of art along the way. It will truly be an unforgettable experience.
Overnight Vatu Sanctuary
Cnr Babbage and Knuckey Avenue, Braitling, Alice Springs
Ph: 0417 274 431
www.vatusanctuary.com.au
Monday 26 May
Breakfast is included. This morning, in two hire cars, we will drive to Hermannsburg (125kms from Alice Springs).
The Hermannsburg School is an art movement, or art style, which began at the Hermannsburg Mission in the 1930s. The best known artist of the style is Albert Namatjira. The movement is characterised by watercolours of western-style landscapes that depict the often striking colours of the Australian outback.
Located 125 km west of Alice Springs, in Central Australia, Hermannsburg was founded by Lutheran missionaries in 1877. The Western Arrernte people have lived in this region for thousands of years. In 1941 Rex Battarbee founded the Aranda Art Group, which controlled the supply of materials and helped handle the business affairs of the emerging artists.
The Hermannsburg painters' work is characterised by soft hues, usually water colours, of their Western Arrernte landscape, which European settlers named the Western Macdonnell Ranges. Previously, Western Arrernte people had only used art in a ceremonial sense, as topographical interpretations of their country and their particular Dreamings, painted using symbols.
Early works by Albert also conveyed this spiritual connection with the land. They shared an intimate knowledge of the land on which they had lived for thousands of years. The Ghost Gum features prominently in the works, a sacred and important part of Western Arrernte mythology. In the best works by Otto Pareroultja trees were painted as ancestral beings with body-like trunks & arm-like branches.
Morning tea and a picnic lunch will be provided.
This afternoon we’ll return to Alice Springs and visit galleries there such as Mwerre Anthurre - Bindi Art.
Mwerre Anthurre art portrays the essence, beauty and humour of Central Australia. Each artwork is a beautiful reflection of the life and surrounds of the region as seen, known and loved by the artist.
Capturing the landscape with dynamic brushstrokes Mwerre Anthurre Artists create unique, high-quality naive and fine art. Exhibited nationally and internationally Mwerre Anthurre art is highly original, valued and sought after by galleries and private collectors alike.
And Ngurajuta Many Hands.
Ngurratjuta Iltja Ntjarra; Many Hands Art & Gifts is proudly Aboriginal owned and operated and is situated at the Desert Park, right on the doorstep of Alice Springs and the Western MacDonnell Ranges. The organisation started operating in 2004, as an art centre established to provide a place for Arrernte Artists to come together to paint, share and learn new techniques and ideas. The art centre was located on the west side of Alice Springs.
In November 2012 the Ngurratjuta board decided to offer their artists greater exposure by acquiring the Desert Park Art & Gifts shop, while representing the artists from this popular Central Australian park. Ngurratjuta supports a range of well- established contemporary watercolour and acrylic artists who frequently exhibit interstate, as well as many new and emerging artists who are developing their skills. We produce four specific styles of art including, watercolours, traditional dot style, naïve style and the more contemporary style paintings. The artworks tell many different stories and are completed in a variety of techniques including, intricate and subtle brush strokes, distinct and detailed dot work as well as broad and often bold freestyle use of acrylic paints and colours.
We currently support over 300 artists with a special focus on encouraging the ‘Hermannsburg School’ style watercolour artists, who continue to paint in the tradition of their grandfather, Albert Namatjira, arguably one of Australia’s most famous artists of the 20th century. Albert Namatjira taught his children to follow in his unique style, who have since passed this knowledge on to their children, which has resonated in a legacy of watercolour artists in the Central Desert region. By continuing his legacy, these artists sustain an important piece of living history.
Return to our accommodation for dinner and overnight.
Overnight Vatu Sanctuary Alice Springs.
Tuesday 27 May
Breakfast is included. Check out and settle any incidentals and drive to the airport for our charter flight. This pilot and plane will be with us for the next three days. Morning tea and a picnic lunch will be provided.
Fly Alice Springs to Warlukurlangu Artists at Yuendumu.
Established in 1985 Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation is a not-for-profit organisation that is 100% Aboriginal-owned by its artists from the remote desert communities of Yuendumu and Nyirripi in Central Australia.
Warlukurlangu Artists is famous for its gloriously colourful acrylic paintings and limited edition prints. The art centre has a national and international profile and its art has been featured in hundreds of exhibitions and publications in Australia and around the world.
Warlukurlangu means ‘belonging to fire’ in the local language, Warlpiri, and is named for a fire dreaming site west of Yuendumu.
Continue on to Papunya Tjupi at Papunya.
From the very beginning, the artists strongly indicated that passing on culture to young people was the primary motivation for the establishment of Papunya Tjupi Art Centre. The co-founder and member, Long Jack Phillipus and elder/artist, Michael Jagamara Nelson AO, expressed a deep-held belief that young people need to learn the stories and the painting skills from the older artists.
Papunya is lucky in having a wealth of internationally renowned senior artists involved in the beginnings of the Central Desert art movement. The art centre is a conduit for their expertise and experience to be passed onto the next generation who make up the current group of over 100 artists, many of whom have never painted before.
“We really want to teach our young people to paint too, and to teach our traditional culture through painting. This is very, very important to us.” Michael Nelson AO, Artist, Founder Papunya Tjupi Art Centre, 2007.
Our last visit today isIkuntji Art at Haasts Bluff
Ikuntji (meaning “where creeks cross”) is nestled within the spectacular West MacDonnell Ranges, 230 km west of Alice Springs. To the north of the community is Ulampawarru & Anyali (Mt. Edward & Mt. William), and to the south is the stunning Mereenie Bluff. The mountains change colour with the light of the day, with dramatic highlights that may only last a few seconds.
To the west there are soft red sand hills and stands of desert oak - known locally as 'the jungle'. Stories of long journeys of the Luritja people who travelled from the west during the hard times of the 1930's, moving from rockhole to rockhole and cave to mountain, are still told today in the paintings of the senior law women at Ikuntji.
Cradled between two desert mountain ranges, the Haasts Bluff region offers painters a constantly changing vista that moves through the colour spectrum throughout the day. The life cycle of bush tucker varieties, and the routes taken across the country over many generations for harvesting these native foods are frequent stories told by the Ikuntji painters within their works, as are the stories of the spirit world that runs parallel with the physical world of the here and now.
Arrive at Uluru (Ayers Rock) Airport and transfer to your accommodation tonight at Sails in the Desert.
Dinner is included at the hotel.
Overnight Sails in the Desert , Uluru
Wednesday 28 May
Breakfast is included. Transfer to the airport to fly to Pipalyatjara air strip and visit Ninuku Arts.
Ninuku Arts is a wholly-Indigenous owned and governed Art Centre which supports artists from two communities - Pipalyatjara and Kalka. Both communities are located in the far north-western corner of South Australia, near the tri-state border of South Australia, Western Australia and Northern Territory. The two communities, fourteen kilometres apart, are surrounded by the rolling, rocky hills of the Tomkinson Ranges and are part of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands.
Ninuku Arts is an Indigenous owned arts centre. It is governed by a committee of practising artists with the advice and support of a full-time manager and studio manager. All art work produced is catalogued, documented and authenticated and income from sales flows back to individual artists, with a proportion set aside to maintain Ninuku Arts as a community-owned enterprise. Ninuku Arts supports local culture, the development of employment opportunities, and the ethical production and sales of paintings.
Morning tea and a picnic lunch will be provided.
Fly to (Nyapari) and the art centre of Tjungu Palya.
Tjungu Palya is an Aboriginal owned and governed Art Centre established in 2006 to promote, protect and enhance Aboriginal arts, language and culture of the region. The Art Centre is based in Nypari community, which is located at the base of the Mann Ranges in the Pitjantatjara lands of far north-west South Australia (approximately 100 kilometres from the Western Australian border). Artists working with Tjungu Palya Art Centre live at Kanpi, Nyapari, Angatja and Watarru.
Tjungu Palya is a dynamic and innovative community Art Centre that plays a vital economic role in the sustainability of these small communities. Tjungu Palya also supports community development projects such as an aged care and lunch program, governance training and cultural maintenance. The motivation for building up the business of the art centre is to increase the capacity for Anangu to take positive control of their lives. Tjungu Palya means ‘Good Together’ and refers to this collaboration between the homelands.
Return to Uluru and enjoy dinner in the hotel on return.
Overnight Sails in the Desert
Thursday 29 May
Breakfast is included.
Depart Uluru Airport for the one hour flight south to Ernabella (or vice versa)
Arrive at Ernabella Arts Inc.
Ernabella Arts Inc. is Australia’s oldest Indigenous art centre. It has been operating continuously since 1948. For the first 28 years artists worked almost exclusively with wool, spinning and weaving it, and making hand-pulled floor rugs incorporating their own unique walka (designs).
Painting styles went through radical developments from 2002 and Ernabella painting now encompasses subjects drawn from Tjukurpa (the eternal Creation stories); mai putitja (bush food stories) and elements of the early and unique anapalyaku walka (Ernabella style). Limited edition prints on paper are another increasingly important art form.
Artists also enjoy working with a variety of bush materials, including tjanpi (spinifex grass) to make baskets and large sculptural pieces; tatu, wayanu and ininti: gumnuts and various seeds which are made into bush jewellery and “art on a string”; and punu: carved wooden traditional tools, and birds, animals and reptiles which are decorated with a distinctive poker work design.
We’ll take a short flight south to the community of Fregon to visit Kaltjiti Arts.
Kaltjiti Arts is located in Fregon (Kaltjiti) in remote North West South Australia in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara lands. The art centre focuses on helping elder artists share their art making traditions and stories about the land with younger generations. The artists at the centre produce works in a range of mediums from paint, works on paper, fibre weaving and wood carving to Inma (dance, or performance). These varied expressions are representative of the artistic styles of Kaltjiti Arts. The sand dunes and abundance of wildflowers in the landscape are also a constant inspiration to artists working at the centre.
Return to Uluru. We transfer back to the hotel and the pilot and plane depart to Alice Springs.
Enjoy dinner in the hotel this evening – there is a range of restaurants to choose from.
Overnight Sails in the Desert
Friday 30 May
Breakfast is included.
Today we’ll drive to Maruku Arts in the community of Mutijulu at Uluru.
Maruku Arts was established in 1984 as the trading arm of Anangu Uwankaraku Punu Aboriginal Corporation. The centre represents more than 800 artists from the Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara language groups.
After Maruku, we’ll head to Uluru itself and spend some time exploring. If you prefer, we may do this at sunrise and watch the sun come up and light the rock.
Lunch will be provided and the afternoon is free to relax prior to dinner.
Early evening, be collected from the hotel to enjoy the Sounds of Silence as a farewell dinner.
Your Sounds of Silence experience begins with canapés and chilled sparkling wine served on a viewing platform overlooking the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. As the sun sets and darkness falls, listen to the sound of a didgeridoo and join your table for an unforgettable dining experience and an introduction to Aboriginal culture with a traditional dance performance under the outback sky
Attentive staff will keep your glass full with a quality selection of Australian wine and beer while first course is served. As the night sky twinkles to life, help yourself to a bush tucker inspired buffet that incorporates native bush ingredients such as crocodile, kangaroo, barramundi and quandong.
Settle back and listen to our resident star talker decode the southern night sky. Locate the Southern Cross, the signs of the zodiac, the Milky Way, as well as planets and galaxies that are visible due to the exceptional clarity of the atmosphere. After dinner, enjoy dessert with a glass of port, tea or coffee.
Return to the hotel.
Overnight Sails in the Desert.
Saturday 31 May
Breakfast is included. Check out and settle any incidentals. Transfers arranged to the airport depending on departure details.
Depart from Uluru Airport. Departure flight not included.