00:00It's dusk on Waramungu country, and local artists Aileen and Penny search for bush tucker.
00:11It's reflective in their work at the Barclay Regional Arts Space in Tennant Creek.
00:15When you've got to come dry, you've got to come see the same, see it when I'm drawing.
00:23These grandmothers are the younger of the first wave of popular contemporary Aboriginal
00:27artists from the Barclay Region.
00:30This one when I was a little one, little one, and this one's for tucker, this side.
00:39It's absolutely who she is.
00:41Painting is who she is and what she's about, like you can't stop her from doing it, and
00:47the story's always, if you ask what it's about, it's always about bush tomatoes.
00:52So the tomatoes, were they babies?
00:54Yeah.
00:55What colour were they babies?
00:56Yeah, babies.
00:57Yellow.
00:58Like the yellow.
00:59Yellow.
01:00Yeah.
01:01So nice to see you here in Darwin.
01:02Aileen and I and her friend Penny Kelly, we had a road trip to Darwin for Aileen's solo exhibition.
01:09Aileen sold out all of her artwork and then was invited back about 12 months later and had
01:17another sellout exhibition.
01:20She made art her job.
01:21She made money for the family and her art was very different from a lot of artists in
01:27the region.
01:28And it turned out that people out there in the universe loved Aileen's work.
01:35Aileen took up painting once she was no longer needed to care for her grandchildren.
01:40It's a familiar story amongst these elders who continue to care for their families through
01:46their art.
01:47But with age comes health issues.
01:50Over the years her brain has changed.
01:53She's getting a dementia or an Alzheimer's and her brain has changed a lot.
01:59In the early work there was lots of dots so you could see the bush tomatoes.
02:04Nowadays it's much more big brush strokes and not so many dots.
02:09But if you ask her she's still painting bush tomatoes.
02:13It's very common that the paintings are telling stories of country.
02:17Apenara.
02:18That's my mother's countryside.
02:21This is about a swamp and the flowers grow after the rain.
02:29Even across families there's a great variety in the way people tell stories.
02:34The Beazley-Peterson mob, that's three generations of those artistic women working together.
02:46There's stories amongst those people around the rain making and so the art reflects that.
02:53Their legacy, their art.
02:58Taking care of their families for years to come.
Comments