After 40 years in exile, Yulparitja elders take Daniel Walbidi, their most promising young artist, back to the desert heartland they left behind.

SYNOPSIS
In the remote Aboriginal community of Bidyadanga a new art movement has emerged. At its helm is a young Aboriginal man who is well on the way to international fame and possible fortune. Daniel Walbidi paints the desert country that his parents walked out of 40 years ago. Now, with the rock holes, sandhills and salt lakes of their country revitalized through the creation of the paintings, they are determined to go back and show Daniel their desert country for the first time.

Click here to read "Our old people need to paint", an article published 29 Jan in The Australian about Daniel Walbidi and the Bidyadanga art movement.

DESERT HEART WILL PREMIERE ON ABC - TUESDAY 18 MARCH 2008 at 10PM

In Depth.

Daniel was born and raised in Bidyadanga, but his parents, grandparents and extended Yulparitja tribe were part of a desert diaspora during the sixties and seventies when his people drifted towards the coast - either lured in by pastoralists and missionaries, or to rejoin family who had already walked out.

Bidyadanga was once a cattle station, then a ration station until the Catholics took over in the sixties and it became “La Grange” mission. By the mid-seventies, Bidyadanga was home to around four distinct desert tribes and language groups, plus the traditional owners, the saltwater Karrajarri people.

For the next 30 or 40 years Bidyadanga was fairly typical of many indigenous communities. Most days revolved around fishing and the occasional hunting trip and the community had its share of health and social issues. But when the Karrajarri won a claim for native title in 2002 a significant shift took place and issues of identity and country came to the forefront for the Yulparitja. Exiled from their traditional homeland, a distinct yearning for their own desert country began to re-emerge.

Around this time, Daniel arrived on the doorstep of Broome gallery owner Emily Rohr armed with a collection of canvases he had painted at high school and proclaiming he wanted to be an artist. With striking motifs and abstract images of his father’s country, it was obvious he had genuine artistic talent. Encouraged by the response to his work, he returned to Bidyadanga with fresh canvas and paint and devoured every book on art he could lay his hands on.

Within a matter of months an explosion of creativity and expression burst forth from the sleepy Bidyadanga community as Daniel led a core group of Yulparitja elders in a spiritual and cultural revival of their country. Vibrant and bold motifs manifested in a discordant array of colours - hot desert reds and oranges together with the bright turquoise blues and greens of the coast. It was desert country painted in a saltwater palette. For Daniel an unseen landscape come to life.

After a series of sell out exhibitions, these unique works became the “next big thing” in the Aboriginal art scene. The “Bidyadanga Movement” came into being and Daniel became one of its leading proponents. Articulate and well educated, he moved with relative ease between the conflicting worlds of art and commerce and traditional Aboriginal culture.

For the Yulparitja, Daniel assumed an increasingly important role as the old people passed on the knowledge and stories of their country to him. As time passed and more people started to paint, the more the artists wanted to revisit their far off desert sandhills, salt lakes and soakages. It was imperative for the elders to revisit this country and for Daniel to experience it firsthand.