For thousands of years, the small community of Papunya, 240 kilometres northwest of Alice Springs has been an important honey-ant dreaming site inspiring art and music. Now and collection of long-lost stories and illustrations are on display in a first of its kind exhibition.
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00:00Papunya is synonymous with the birth of the world-famous Western desert art movement,
00:08as well as the remarkable and lesser-known creative arts and bilingual publishing house
00:13called the Papunya Literature Production Centre.
00:17From 1979 to 1990, it was a flourishing cultural hub, using the then-new technology of offset
00:25and publishing hundreds of meticulously illustrated books written by local authors and storytellers.
00:32And for the first time since it closed three decades ago, a new exhibition has opened to
00:37showcase the work, featuring a treasure trove of illustrations, stories and depictions of
00:46first contact.
00:47The people, they think that plane, that's a devil.
00:56On display is a long-lost collection of priceless materials from the descendants of the world-famous
01:02Papunya Chula artists, demonstrating the convergence between art and bilingual education.
01:09Stories by Johnny Warangula, Uda Uda, Jangala, Nosepeak, Juparula, you know, all the big
01:16names and they were contributors to the Literature Production Centre.
01:20Betty Brown is proud of her grandfather's contribution.
01:24He used to paint at Papunya School wall and he used to tell the story in the language,
01:35in Bindupi and Kluwitja language.
01:38After the program's demise in the 1990s, the collection was hidden away in a darkroom for
01:42three decades, closing a significant chapter on Papunya's history.
01:47The exhibition really celebrates this amazing collection of resources that people made,
01:52all of the work that they did over decades of bilingual education and literacy production
01:56at Papunya.
01:58Interpreters who once worked at the centre are delighted with the exhibition.
02:01It's very important for everyone to know, like our grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren
02:09when they grow up and see all this, what our, you know, grandfather did.
02:18A timeless collection, inspiring the next generation.