Quotes and sto­ries from the artists, trans­lat­ed by stu­dio coordinator

Mandy Mal­bun­ka – inter­me­di­ate artist and mentor

“I enjoyed the paint­ing (in a large scale). I like these bush tuck­ers. I am proud of the work and think we have done good”.

Deli­na Inka­mala — estab­lished artist and mentor

“I learnt about Christ­mas at school, not at com­mu­ni­ty. We did not have Christ­mas or East­er; we just live with bush tuck­ers time. I did have a dif­fer­ent life, just learn­ing life”.

“When I was young, used to trav­el around with my fam­i­ly in the hol­i­days. We would go and find the bush tuck­er and enjoy the swim­ming. We used to find lots of bush tuck­ers back in these days. This was before the buf­fel grass”.

Dianne Inka­mala — inter­me­di­ate artist and mentor

Rain Sto­ry ​“After the rain time, the seeds come down from the sky and then they grow into sum­mer­time fruits and us mob get ready to eat them.”

Ros­alie Sum­mer­field- emerg­ing artist

I liked doing this paint­ing for the Christ­mas Tree base. I like to think I did it for the young ones and for the tourists so that they will learn about our coun­try and the bush foods. I like see­ing all these beau­ti­ful colours. There is 63 dif­fer­ent nation­al­i­ties Mparn­twe (Alice Springs) and it’s impor­tant for us to learn cul­ture and his­to­ry of the land we are all on.