Across the desert

Aboriginal Batik from Central Australia

Ernabella

Nestled in the shadows of the Musgrave Ranges in South Australia, is Ernabella, a Pitjantjatjara community located 440 kilometres south west of Alice Springs. Established as a Presbyterian Mission in 1936, its long history of art production dates from 1940 where Ron Trudinger, a linguist, was appointed as the first teacher for Ernabella children. He learned to speak and transcribe Pitjantjatjara and encouraged the students to write in their own language and create individual walka tjuta, translated as designs or meaningful marks, in pastels on Christmas cards and cardboard.

Ernabella is of unique importance because of its long history of art and craft production. The decision to give Pitjantjatjara women a chance to paint their own designs set a precedent that has been followed by many other Central Australian and Western Desert communities from the late 1970s onwards. Ernabella also broke new ground by encouraging the women to use new materials, pastels and watercolours rather than produce simulations of sacred ochre designs for sale. The introduction of batik in 1971 proved so successful that it set a precedent that was eagerly followed at Fregon, Amata, Utopia, at Yuendumu, Kintore, on Bathurst in the Tiwi Islands, at Daly River and in Fitzroy Crossing.

Aboriginal batik production first began in 1971 at Ernabella in the extreme north-west of South Australia, where an art centre has operated continuously since 1948 and batik production still flourishes. Introduced to the medium, Ernabella artists quickly modified batik to suit their own needs and conditions, drawing directly onto cotton fabric lengths or home-made garments with cantings and hot wax: their curving designs influenced by the practice of milpatjunanyi – telling stories in the sand. Ernabella became an exemplar for others to follow: batik was soon after adopted by Anangu artists at Fregon, an outstation of Ernabella, whose iconography also developed from their fluid drawings or walka.

Once batik techniques were mastered the artists concentrated on designing for the items produced, varying designs according to the scale of the support. Already confident with colour and line, the artists attacked the long cloth with spontaneous assurance, in the same way as they had directly brushed walka tjuta on to small cards or sheets of watercolour paper. The expansion of scale transformed their earlier organic designs from miniature curved motifs within squares or rectangles to unbounded veins and sinews of colour spreading and branching across the length of the cloth. The situation paralleled the Papunya artists' move from small scraps of board to monumental canvases, signalling a transition from miniature motifs to designs with a totality of gesture.