Painted Country Gallery presents a Unique Collection of Aboriginal Batik Silks in retrospect -

 

Ernabella Batik Silks represent the distinctive designs that reflect the colours and shapes seen in the land, ceremonial (imna) body paint and sand paintings by three celebrated Pitantjatjara women artists from Ernabella in the Musgrave ranges of South Australia. 

The craft of batik making was introduced to Ernabella in 1976. Ernabella is an Aboriginal settlement 440 kilometres south west of Alice Springs, It was established as a missionary station by the Presbyterian Church in 1880. Since the 1970s, it has become known for its colourful batiks, made largely by the women of the community.

The Batik medium suited the ‘walka’ designs well and provided the basis of what was to become a thriving commercial fabric business. Colours of Ernabella fabrics are often bright, reflecting, as the painters describe, the colours of the earth interspersed with greens, blues, violets, pinks, reds and other brilliant colours also seen in the night sky, desert flora of wildflowers, grasses and seeds.

Until the late 1980s, no one was painting Western Desert dot-style paintings at Ernabella – mainly because many Pitjantjatjara people strongly resisted the notion that traditional designs, whether secret or not, be on public view.

Since about 1986, however, this view has softened considerably, with Ernabella painters relating their own Dreaming stories using a combination of Western Desert style with the design elements of the ‘walka’. In 1996, a ceramics workshop utilising the skills of ceramics practitioners was also introduced at Ernabella, producing pottery decorated with designs similar to that of the fabrics Aboriginal Art continues to reinforce the culture and stories of the artist and their families as it has done for many thousands of years.