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Talking Utopia

At the Artlore office in Alice Springs MARC GOOCH (Artlore) and BILL NUTTALL (Niagara Galleries, Melbourne) talk to PETER HYLANDS about the development of contemporary art practice at Utopia. Utopia, an area of just under 2,000 square kilometres, is semi-arid desert country to the north east of Alice Springs, inhabited by Aboriginal people, who live in a number of communities or outstations across the Utopia lands.

There is no official art centre at Utopia, Niagara Galleries relationship with Utopia artist ANGELINA PWERLE is facilitated by MARC GOOCH and JANET PIERCE of Artlore. MARC is the nephew of the late RODNEY GOOCH who managed the CAAMA shop, the art, craft and music outlet of the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association and Utopia Batik, he was art co-ordinator from 1987 to 1992.

RODNEY is credited with encouraging and enabling the many artists of Utopia to pursue international careers in the arts. The late EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE was one of these artists, now regarded as one of Australia’s most significant artists of all time. MARC and his partner JANET worked closely with RODNEY GOOCH and continued his work after his death.

ANGELINA PWERLE was one of a group of women who produced batik for the CAAMA shop. She was also a participating artist in A summer project, the seminal event that inspired the first Utopia canvases painted in the summer of 1988-89. BILL NUTTALL first discovered ANGELINA’s work in 1993 when he came across a sculpture that took his breath away, the sculpture was by ANGELINA.  Here BILL speaks about ANGELINA and his long term relationship with this significant contemporary artist.