The Utopia community has come to be associated with some of Australia’s most vibrantly exciting art. Situated 240 km north-east of Alice Springs in central Australia astride the traditional lands of Eastern Anmatyerre and Alyarre peoples, Utopia was the name of the original pastoral lease taken out on the area in 1927. This lease resulted in the traditional areas being depopulated as local tribespeople moved to homestead encampments to find work. In 1977, the Aboriginal Land Fund Commission acquired the lease on behalf of the Utopia community and in 1979 the land was returned to them under inalienable freehold title.

Also in 1977, a batik program was started in Utopia as a source of income for the women. The majority of the artists creating these batik designs were women painting Dreamtime stories of bush tucker and women’s ceremonies. In the preparation for the land claim this direct connection between art and land helped to provide the supportive evidence needed for the Utopia community to lodge their successful land-rights claim. Throughout the hearings the women of Utopia displayed their batiks to demonstrate the economic viability of the outstations, and also as an expression of their Dreaming rights and responsibilities to the country.

In the late 1980s the Utopia artists moved from batik to canvas, many finding increasing freedom of expression with this new medium. In 1989 the ‘Summer Project’ exhibition was opened in Sydney, launching Utopia art into a new era of public and critical acclaim. It was in this year that Emily Kame Kngwarreye first came to the attention of the art world. Critically lauded as the most original and exciting indigenous artist to emerge since the Papunya movement of the 1970s, Emily played a significant role in placing the artists of Utopia within the context of contemporary art. “The obvious connections with a modern abstract painting tradition, reaching from Claude Monet to Jackson Pollock to Tony Tuckson, made Kngwarreye’s paintings intelligible to curators, critics and buyers” (Janine Burke, The Age, 13/6/1998). These works from Utopia were immediately recognisable for their rawness and energy.

Also exhibiting successfully in these formative years at Flinders Lane Gallery were Gloria Petyarre and Barbara Weir. Gloria was awarded the prestigious 1999 Wynne Prize for Landscape painting from the Art Gallery of NSW. Her work shows an enthusiasm for experimentation with her imagery including the rhythmic bush medicine leaves and the patterning of the mountain devil lizard. The adopted daughter of Emily, Barbara Weir has also established herself as an artist of international standing with regular exhibitions throughout the Asia Pacific and Europe.

In 2000 Flinders Lane Gallery exhibited for the first time the paintings of then 89 year-old Utopia artist Minnie Pwerle. The biological mother of Barbara Weir, Minnie’s extraordinary paintings once again captured the attention of the art world. “The demand for Pwerle’s luminescent canvases shows no sign of abating, with galleries around the world clamouring for them sight unseen.” (All in the Family Susan McCulloch, Weekend Australian 8-9 November 2003). Minnie’s second solo exhibition at Flinders Lane Gallery was held in 2004, and in 2006 Minnie exhibited for the first time in Australia at Flinders Lane Gallery with her sisters Molly, Emily and Galya Pwerle. Minnie took a close and supportive role in the development of her younger sisters, all of whom had an instant response to applying paint onto canvas and developed expressions of the dreamings that have been passed from generation to generation. Sadly, after a brief but highly productive career, Minnie passed away in March 2006, two weeks after her final exhibition.

Recently emerging Utopia artists Lizzie Pwerle, Janie & Katie Morgan, and Annie Hunter have been applying their own distinctive dreamings to canvas producing some very fine new imagery. Lizzie is first cousin to the Pwerle sisters, whilst Annie is the daughter of Molly Pwerle. While the work of the artists is widely different and quite distinctive in imagery and style, similarities are found in the artists’ desire to seek beyond the surface - to bring to the fore the largely unseen substructures of the land, its flora & fauna, and the artists’ Dreaming stories. The Dreaming is a coded culture, which tells how the ancestral spirits created, then became the land, how the land is alive and sacred. Thus, Minnie’s ‘bush melon’ pictures of criss-crossed lines evoke the roots stretching deep into the soil, Barbara Weir’s ‘grass seeds’ evoke the wild grasses which shed seeds so vital for sustenance, while Gloria’s delicate ‘bush medicine’ imagery depict the leaves which are gathered up, crushed, and made into the paste which is used for medicinal purposes. It is this duality - the visual impact of the work, coupled with its important cultural message that ensures its place in the great collections of the world.