360 Degree Films

“Painting Country presents a positive ‘good news’ story from a remote community which too often only attracts media attention when there’s a problem”
— Andrew Ogilvie, Producer

Deep in the desert landscape of Australia, the ancestral heroes are still alive; mythical beings capable of magical acts still roam the country, explaining the land and its law to the people. The people listen to the land and celebrate its power through song, story and painting.”

Painting Country follows a journey back to the traditional country of ten indigenous artists from the outback community of Balgo in North West Australia. Their art is famous for its hot bright colours, bold composition and creative brush techniques. Its origins lie in the traditional designs done in sand and body paintings. But in less than 20 years it has evolved into one of the most innovative movements of modern art in Australia. And every brushstroke or ‘mark’ is about the artists’ relationship to their country.

Yet none of these artists live in the land they paint. Most were born hundreds of kilometres away in the desert, and lived a nomadic life until they were driven off their land by the impact of white settlement. It has been decades since they’ve seen the land they paint, and for many of the older indigenous artists, this journey may be the last chance to see the country where they were born.

Painting Country takes the audience on a journey into the heart of some of Australia’s most remote and desolate landscape. The group travels through the Great Sandy Desert, towards Lake Mackay, a major constellation of dreaming sites for desert people. All along the way the artists paint and tell stories about their life before the white man arrived. For Tjumpo Tjapanangka, returning to the land he paints releases powerful recollections: “I still remember it. I am from this place. I went through the law here. This is still my place. I grew up and became a man here…we were all naked. We belonged to this country. No white man here. No one else - just us. This was our place.”

Despite decades of absence we witness how the land is still familiar to these artists. They know exactly where one person’s land begins, and another ends. This relationship to the land is determined by family and language groups: “That road…I can talk for it”, and, “That’s the country from my granny’s side.” Their spirit lives in the land they paint, and the act of painting is an act of remembering, of keeping it alive. Every mark or line is deliberate, as the artists recreate a track they used to walk to a particular watering hole, or a place where certain bush foods grew. With flawless navigation, they know each and every turn of the desert country, where the road is rough, and where it disappears. When these details are recorded on canvas, the painting becomes a celebration, a prayer, and a reflection of their deep relationship with the land.

But the journey is not without it’s problems. Unseasonal heavy rains have made many of the roads impassable - turning the Great Sandy Desert into the Great Sandy Swamp. With humour and good spirits the artists dig their way out of the mud until they reach the tiny community of Kiwirrkurra. Here they are forced to sit out the rain until the roads dry out and they can continue west to their final destination of the Gibson Desert. As we travel further and further back into the artists’ country, their stories intimately unfold as to why they were forced to leave their land and go to what was once a Mission at Balgo.

Painting Country provides an evocative and intimate connection with the Aboriginal artists, the laws of their land, and an insight into part of their history. Their paintings keep this history alive. As Balgo community art coordinator Tim Acker, says: “The best of the work out here is as contemporary as anywhere you’d find on the planet. The fact that it’s painted by people whose background, whose perception, whose storytelling, whose priorities, whose whole life is so different gives it a quality that other paintings don’t have.

In Sally Ingleton’s poignant documentary, (the artists) they travel back to their ancestral lands around the Great Sandy Desert…it is a bitter sweet journey one packed with humour, sadness and incident. One of the most accessible and engaging recent documentaries of its kind Painting County brings to the attention of a wider audience work that is not only artistically important, but represents an invaluable record of another life lived a lifetime ago.

BARBARA HOOKS, The Age Green Guide, 4 Oct 2001

Sally Ingleton’s documentary PAINTING COUNTRY, tracks the 1000km round trip taken by 10 artists from the isolated Balgo Hills community…It’s not the first film to record such a journey, nor to highlight the crucial links for indigenous artists between country and painting. But it is the first made of that by the artists of this area. As such it tells different stories of different lands and customs as well as artists sharing, often with warmth and humour as well as some sadness, the important even that shaped their lives.

SUSAN McCULLOCH-UEHLIN, The Australian. October 4 2001

• Winner

  Silver Chris Award Best Arts Program - Columbus Film Festival

• Finalist

  International Electronic Cinema Festival Tokyo

• Invited

  Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival

• Invited

  Melbourne International Film Festival

• Invited

  York International Film Festival

• Australia & NZ

  Judith Cockburn-Campbell
  Head of Distribution and Publicity
  EP Independent
  33 Canning Hwy
  East Fremantle 6158
  Western Australia
  T: +61 8 9339 1133
  judith.cockburn@epindependent.com

• Press Kit (PDF)

• Warlayirti Artists at Balgo Western Australia