Alison Napurrula Multa

Alison was born in Alice Springs in Central Australia and moved with her mother back to her country near Haasts Bluff. As a dynamic and intelligent person she keeps busy as vice-president of the Ikuntji Community Council, teaches at the Haasts Bluff community school, sits on the regional health board, and paints during most evenings with her daughter Serianne Butcher. Alison is married to Gordon Butcher who was a founding member of the Warumpi Band which burst onto the Australian rock scene in the early 1980’s and soon gained national and international recognition, touring with the likes of Midnight Oil. Alison’s home country is 200km west of Haasts Bluff in and around the Cleland Hills, sand hill country beyond the West MacDonnell Ranges, with a permanent dwelling at Brown’s Bore enabling her to return and visit the places sacred to her family and renew her connections with the land. As an up and coming artist she likes to experiment with styles and textures, and does not limit herself to the telling of personal stories, but likes to take in the broader sweep of desert life and aboriginal connection to this landscape and its changing moods, its harshness and its beauty. Alison is friendly and good fun, has an excellent knowledge of traditional aboriginal law and custom, but is a thoroughly modern women who represents the new generation of indigenous peoples and artists of central Australia – Oh, and she is an excellent softball player. In Alison’s own words…… My grandfather’s Tjukurrpa is the Moon story. The moon story travels from south of Brown’s Bore right through to Santa Teresa, passing through Glen Helen. Today I paint in the art centre, but not just tjukurrpa. You can’t just paint anything. Because if you paint anyone’s dreaming, or anyone’s story, you’ll get in trouble, that’s too dangerous. You got to do your own painting, your own story. You got to be careful. You got to do grandmother’s, grandfather’s, not just anyone’s. That’s why I like to do not just tjukurrpa paintings. I am painting fire stories now, because for Anangu people fire is the reason for everything, fire is very important in our culture and our lives.