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Beneath the furious tide of contemporary Aboriginal life, the deeply-etched cultural traditions of the Western Desert shift in gentle measure. As the tension between these colliding worlds continues to intensify, so too does the evolution of Aboriginal art. It is well known that land and ceremony govern the work of Aboriginal artists, but now there is a sense of change within the cultural landscape. A startling illustration of this has appeared deep in the desert heart of Western Australia, at the Pintupi outpost of Kiwirrkura. It is here the founding protocols of contemporary Aboriginal art are receding under the influence of desert life and death.

This tiny community 700 kilometres west of Alice Springs continues to maintain its proud painting history through the Aboriginal owned and directed art centre, Papunya Tula Artists Pty. Ltd. Kiwirrkura was established in 1983 as a new home for the determined clutch of Pintupi families that remained scattered amongst the outstation communities west of the government settlement of Papunya. The return to their traditional homelands ended a period of dislocation that began in the 1950s when government patrols entered the far reaches of the western deserts to further implement their policy of the centralisation and assimilation of desert people.

After leaving the dysfunction of Papunya, where they were viewed as outcasts, the Pintupi felt a strong desire to again distinguish themselves as the 'people from the west'. This resolve was strengthened when shortly after their arrival, in 1984, a desert family of nine emerged from their nomadic life and into the communal fold of their Kiwirrkura kin. The community defiantly closed ranks around the family to shelter them from the hysterical media that had arrived to herald the discovery of a 'lost tribe'. It remains an extraordinary story in Australian history, no more important than in Kiwirrkura, where a number of this family continue to reside proudly in the land of their ancestors.

In 1996 two small groups of women from Kintore and Kiwirrkura began to paint on a regular basis for Papunya Tula Artists. Prior to this, some of the women would have assisted their aging husbands in the completion of artworks by dotting areas of the paintings' background. The collaborative process, evident since the early period of the movement, was instrumental in the development of future generations of painters. This practice was initially restricted to younger male relatives of the 'author' of the artwork. As the collaborators became artists in their own right, however, the role of women as assistants began.

Initially it was the senior women from nearby Kintore, 170 kilometres to the east of Kiwirrkura, who were given the opportunity to depict their stories in paint. Unlike the increasingly formal line and circle constructs of the male painters, their work was a riot of exuberant colour and gestural line. Using new and unfamiliar techniques, artists such as Makinti Napanangka and Inyuwa Nampitjinpa reinterpreted familiar desert iconography to defy the popular expectation of what desert art should be. 

In Kiwirrkura the demographic was different; most notable was the significant absence of senior women in the community who would have provided leadership in this new cultural activity. Their absence undoubtedly created an environment free from expectation and open to the prevailing artistic legacy of the men of the community. Here began a unique chain of artistic influence with the women adopting the subtlety, tone and structure of the male so-called minimalists. It took time and yet another defining episode in the history of Kiwirrkura for this new chapter in contemporary Aboriginal art to take shape...

This article appears in excerpted form. You can read the entire article in Art & Australia's Autumn 2009 issue.