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Shopping for Aboriginal art
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Alice has become the country's foremost centre for the art and crafts produced by Aboriginal people, and Todd Mall is full of galleries selling a vast range of high-quality work. Most common are the
dot paintings
, canvas depictions of the temporary sand paintings formerly used to pass on sacred knowledge during ceremonies of the Central Desert tribes. The modern manifestation of this school of art originated in the early 1970s at Papunya, northwest of Alice, under the encouragement of a local teacher, Geoff Bardon. What was intended as a kind of constructive graffiti for youngsters was taken up by the elders. Clifford Possum and Billy Stockman were among the earliest of the Papunya artists to find fame, and their paintings are free of the clumsy flashiness of some contemporary work. There are half a dozen lavish books offering a compilation of Central Desert art, the best of which is
Songlines and Dreamings
by Patrick Corbally Stourton (Lund Humphries) - you'll find it in Alice's bookshops.
While it's more difficult to recommended a single
gallery
, you'd do well starting your search at the Original Dreamtime Gallery, 63 Todd Mall, the Aboriginal Art and Culture Centre, 86 Todd St (it's still just a gallery despite the name) or Gallery Gondwana, 43 Todd Mall; all are attractive galleries full of good-quality work with the latter displaying some lovely Indonesian artefacts too. Less fancy in appearance but loaded with quality unframed canvases is the Aboriginal-owned Papunya Tula Artists, at 78 Todd St, and the similar Warumpi Arts round the corner on Gregory Terrace; you certainly won't save money by buying direct - usually the opposite - but you might feel happier about who benefits from the proceeds. Another place offering mediocre but inexpensive paintings and didgeridoos is The House of Oz, opposite
Melanka Backpackers Resort,
but in the end it's just a matter of spending half a day or more looking for what you want at a price that you find acceptable. The more you spend, the more chance there is of making a deal, with free overseas postage and insurance usually offered at the bigger places. If you're heading north, the galleries in Aileron, Ti Tree and Tennant Creek have a much smaller range of Aboriginal art on sale, but often at less than half the price of that in Alice's galleries. Other useful information
for tourists (each section contains more specific sub-sections): |
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Australia,
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