A childhood dream to live among the Aborigines has resulted in an award-winning Caloundra photographer creating a colourful reference and coffee table book documenting Indigenous artists.
Dots of Life: Aboriginal Artists of Central Australia, by Robyn Hills, is a vibrant collection of 100 artist portraits, 100 dot paintings and 14 landscape double-page spreads from remote Aboriginal communities in Central Australia.
Her photographs were taken over two life-changing trips in 2016 and 2018, staying at Yuendumu on the edge of the Tanami Desert, bordering the Gibson Desert.
It was 3000km by air from her Regent Street, Caloundra, studio to Alice Springs, then four hours northwest by four-wheel-drive.
“Ever since I was a little kid, I wanted to go and live with the Aborigines,” Robyn said, with a smattering of the hard and softcover books on her studio dining table that create a sense of portrait, painting and place.
“Not quite sure why. I’ve always been fascinated with their artwork as well.”
This is the sixth book from the Master of Photography and Australian Professional Photographer of the Year title winner, whose previous efforts have included Mothers and Daughters and 50 Fabulous Women of the Sunshine Coast as fundraisers for Cancer Council Queensland.
The project came about after the charitable soul had volunteered through Rotary with husband Ross Harrison to go to the Solomon Islands in 2016 to install fresh rainwater tanks for schools.
When logistical problems meant women could not take part, Robyn found herself with two weeks’ worth of blank pages in her diary and turned to an “old friend” in the form of a personal bucket list: Things I’d Like To Do Before I Die At 103.
She decided to finally tick off “live with Aborigines” from that list.
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“I just started talking to everyone that I knew who could possibly have anything to do with Indigenous people,” Robyn said.
“Within 10 days, I had offers to go to three different communities.
“I selected this community (Yuendumu) because they had a structured volunteer program.
“I thought I really probably needed to live there for six months to get it right but the fact that they were used to having people coming in was probably going to be helpful.”
Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation runs the local gallery/arts centre that is 100% Indigenous owned.
And Robyn was ecstatic when arts centre manager Cecila Alfonso asked her to create portraits of each of the artists to update the website, be used in social media posts and placed on a Certificate of Authentication when works were sold. Another volunteer, Daphne Brosnan, did the biographies for the project.
“It was a really lovely way to give them something that was of value to them that they wanted, not what I thought they could have,” Robyn said.
Armed with only the essential lighting equipment, tripods, and cases of camera gear that could safely be squeezed into a 4WD (and trying her best to combat the fine red dust that seemed to infiltrate everything), Robyn set off.
But she soon found that building a rapport and trust with her subjects was going to be her greatest challenge in telling the artists’ raw and real stories through art.
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“It was about keeping a very simple look to the photos and not overglamorising anything,” she said.
“I wanted the portraits to be really classical and timeless and to give them (the artists) the recognition of a documentation that recorded them as people and artists.
“I would sit on the ground with them and watch the painting. That was a really beautiful thing to do.”
Most of the paintings tell Dreaming stories passed down through the generations and often incorporate what Robyn describes as a “dragging” style that connects the dots.
Missionaries introduced the artists to acrylic paint that more closely reflects the intense depth of colours of their Outback surrounds.
“When I was doing the layout of the book, I was quite fascinated that (the landscapes) look like the colours of the paintings,” she said.
“When you turn the next page and see their painting, it looks like the landscape, even though it’s dots and acrylic bright colours.”
The characters she met on her Indigenous commune have left the most indelible impression.
A favourite elder and gallery artist, Rosie Nangala Flemming, is pictured with Robyn on the back cover of the book.
“Rosie is probably my favourite,” Robyn said unashamedly.
“She lives next to the gallery, so she’s part of the gallery.
“She goes around hugging everyone.
“You just can’t go there and not love her because she loves everyone.
“She has got this really beautiful personality.
“No one’s ever quite sure how old she is. She was raised by the local missionaries that came to town.”
Everyone in the Yuendumu community has one of 16 skin names in a complicated naming convention that doesn’t relate to colour but signifies a grouping of people or extended families living together who are not necessarily related.
It was Rosie who gave Robyn the skin name Napaljarri that she now cherishes.
On her second trip to the area, Robyn was privileged to visit the satellite community of Nyrippi, another 100km further out into the desert, where she met Kasey-Anne Nampijinpa Gallagher.
The smile can be heard in Robyn’s voice as she outlines how Kasey-Anne came to be the “covergirl” of the book and project.
“I had photographed her earlier in the week and she had her hair all tied up in a little top knot but with this fabulous, big beaming smile,” Robyn said of the 27-year-old.
“I was literally at the end of the week when I was packing up to put everything back into the 4WD and she walked past me and said ‘hello’ with all her curls out.
“I went, ‘No, no. Come back. Over here’.
“She said, ‘You’ve done me. No, you only get me once’. And I said, “No, no, please. I just need two more photos’.
“She just tossed her hair up in the air and I went ‘click’ and I knew I had these amazing photos.
“Isn’t she beautiful?”
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It was during one of her visits to Yuendumu that Robyn also met fellow visitor and Indigenous Art gallery owner Didier Zanette, from Paris, who asked her to hold her Face to Face exhibition where her artist portraits hung together with their large paintings at the Parcours des Mondes, one of the world’s largest tribal art exhibitions, in the Saint-Germain-des-Pres Fine Arts District.
The idea for the book emerged over the past five years from producing her selection for that exhibition.
Robyn is hoping to return to Yuendumu next year in winter.
- Dots of Life by Robyn Hills will have its local book launch at a Gala Night collaboration on December 2 at Mercedes-Benz Sunshine Coast’s Maroochydore showroom in Maroochy Boulevard for 150 art lovers and dealership clients. Robyn will have 10 original portraits on easels for sale, along with copies of her book. Please email Robyn at info@robyngraphs.com.au to register to attend the launch. See more of her work at robyngraphs.com.au and buy the book from Robyn’s products website
