The first remote community we visited was in the Utopia region in the late 1990’s – and the multiple outstations at which the Utopian artists painted.

Utopia is approx 270km north east of Alice Springs, along the Sandover Highway. When the former pastoral lease was returned to its Indigenous owners in 1979, members of the community turned to art. The art was in its infancy at the time and only starting to gain critical appreciation when Robert and Janet Holmes à Court bought the entire collection of silk batik’s made by 88 artists which were the result of a 1988 project working towards an exhibition titled Utopia, a Picture Story.

The project was documented in a book of the same name, published by the Holmes à Court’s and on one of our visits some years later, we took the book with us to show the artists (pictured). They thought it was a hoot seeing themselves and their work published – laughs galore!

Not long after the success of that exhibition, the artists changed their preferred medium to acrylic painting and wood carving.