Decades of sitting in committee meetings have served artist George Cooley well. Cooley, a senior Indigenous community leader from Coober Pedy, would often while away those gatherings by doodling.

“You get bored and you draw,” he says. “Drawings about Country, drawings about home, little scribbles in my notebook.”

Fast-forward to 2021 and Cooley – also an opal miner and a talented songwriter and performer – was persuaded to try his hand at painting at the new Umoona Community Arts Centre in Coober Pedy.

Initially, he used canvas and paint, before graduating to board and pallet knife, which was a revelation.

“It gave me a bit of a jolt,” he says. “I was able to get the blending of the colours to look almost exactly like the country I’ve been working on opal mining, hunting and camping.”

Now Cooley’s striking representations of the Kaṉku-Breakaways region around Coober Pedy are much sought after. He has been a finalist in the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards and the Wynne Prize.

Cooley was speaking at the opening of APY Gallery Redfern, a new venture from the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Art Centre Collective, of which he is a long-time board member.

APYACC is a wholly Aboriginal owned group representing 11 South Australian art centres. Under their “bush to the boardroom” business model, 80 per cent of the sale price of the art is returned to the communities in the group.

“In 2017, the seven arts centres of the APY lands came together wanting to get a bigger share out of the industry,” says collective CEO Skye O’Meara. “One of the biggest problems in the remote communities of the APY lands was there was this influx of young and emerging artists, and there weren’t any distribution pathways to allow them to get the works to the wall quick enough. So the elders got together and we tried a pilot program in Sydney. Our first gallery in Sydney saw a million dollars returned to the remote communities of the APY Lands in the first year.”

The Redfern gallery adds to the APYACC’s portfolio of two galleries in Melbourne and one in Adelaide.

“In the remote communities of the APY lands and in the regions of South Australia, art centre income is the only source of independent income,” says O’Meara. “What they mean for social impact is extraordinary.

“They have some of the most extreme disadvantage that exist in Australia. But they are also the home of an internationally celebrated art movement. These art centres do the heavy lifting in these communities. They’re amazing.”

Wynne Prize finalist Sandra Pumani, a Yankunytjatjara woman from Mimili Community in the east APY, is also a member of the APYACC board. She says the impact of the art centres on their communities cannot be overestimated.

“[The money] is going to the families and providing food for every family member,” she says.

Pumani was inspired to begin her own art practice after seeing work by her mother and grandmother side by side on a Sydney gallery wall.

“I got emotional and then later on I’m thinking, ‘I should be proud of this’,” she says. “I should take this legacy on. And from then on, I came back and wanted to start painting. I took some of my Aunty Betty’s designs, and my mum’s. That’s how I started, combining them, putting them together.”

Siting the new gallery in Redfern, with its long association with Indigenous culture, is no accident, says O’Meara.

‘For the young people of the APY lands, Redfern is so full of history and struggle and stories. They see Redfern as Hollywood.’

Skye O’Meara

“It was the Elders’ decision to move to Redfern,” she says. “They wanted to connect with community in a more significant manner than was possible in Darlinghurst.

“For the young people of the APY lands, Redfern is so full of history and struggle and stories. They see Redfern as Hollywood. It’s kind of a place that’s energised and where Aboriginal people hold power.

“In the last three weeks of the building works, we’ve had so many Mob from different organisations coming in and welcoming us and being really excited.”

The new gallery, at 143 Redfern Street, Redfern, officially opened on Thursday evening. O’Meara said she was looking forward to it becoming a vibrant local hub.

“Please, please come in,” she said. “And also bring your kids. This is a really good way for families across Australia to demonstrate their support for First Nations people. We have a complicated and sometimes shameful history here in Australia. And this is one way that everyone can have a positive experience together.”

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