Vicki Salisbury Collection  Welcome to the Vicki Salisbury collection.
Click here to start viewing the current collection of aboriginal artworks. Click here to view artist bios Out in the middle of the desert, north east of Alice Springs, people sit in the red dust as they have for thousands of years, absorbed in the work in front of them.
The difference between this picture today and the same picture 500 or 5000 years ago is that today the work in front of them is likely to be a fresh canvas and their implements paint brushes and palette knives.
The people of central desert have embraced art and, for many communities, it has been a lifeline. Nobody knows this better than Vicki Salisbury, curator of 'Utopia In the Tropics', an exhibition of extraordinary paintings from emerging and internationally renowned Aboriginal artists coming up at Pinnacles Gallery.
"I've always been interested in indigenous art," she said. "I started collecting Native American art when I was 18 back in Arizona.
"Then, when I finished my Masters degree here in Australia it was about Aboriginal art and cultural politics I had an idea.
"The proposal was to work with remote communities and encourage them to create art, then to market it and funnel the funds back into the communities. I did a feasibility study in '95 and pitched it to World Vision.
"They were keen and in 1996 we launched the program. It was called Walkabout and it was very successful. I stayed with it for eight-and-a-half years.
She began in 1996 by travelling to the central desert with nurse Vivien Nelson. "At the time the Papunya community had appealed to World Vision for help with health services as their doctors and nurses had all left. So Vivien and I went there. It's very difficult to start out with. You can't just charge in and start telling people what to do. You have to be very quiet and observe what's going on. Continued: Page 2 | Page 3 From townsville eye - June 20, 2007 - Issue 8 Mailing List
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Central Desert
Christine Peterson Nangala |
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