Keringke Arts Aboriginal Art Centre, Ltyentye Apurte (Santa Teresa), Northern Territory
In 1988, the women of Santa Teresa travelled to the Australian Bicentennial Craft Show and exhibited their work, the first time an Aboriginal group had done so. The art they showed had begun just a year earlier, when a nine-week fabric-painting course was offered in the community. The women took to it with a force that surprised even their first coordinator, Cait Wait, who later described it as though they had found an avenue for expression that filled a void. By 1989, ATSIC funding had enabled a purpose-built art centre. The founding artists named it after the Dreaming place of Kathleen Kemarre Wallace, one of the most significant among them: Keringke, an ancient rockhole south of the community formed when an ancestor Kangaroo passed through the country. Keringke means Kangaroo Tracks. It is Kangaroo Dreaming. Wallace, born in 1948 and raised in the bush at Uyetye before her family was forced to the Santa Teresa Mission during drought, became the driving force behind the centre for the next three decades, mentoring three generations of artists in the fine, precise dot style that became known internationally as the Keringke style. She died in February 2024.
Ltyentye Apurte, also known as Santa Teresa, sits 81km southeast of Alice Springs in the MacDonnell Ranges region. In Eastern Arrernte language the name means stand of beefwood trees, and the community of around 500 people is home to one of the most cohesive and culturally active Aboriginal communities in Central Australia. Eastern Arrernte identity connects through skin names, places and ancestral totems, and Keringke artists draw on all of these, using pattern, colour and fluid design to express country, ceremony and self in a style with roots in the ancient rock art and petroglyph traditions of Eastern Arrernte homelands. The art centre quickly became a model for other art projects in the region; by 1992 a cultural exchange program saw artists exhibiting in New Zealand. The Keringke Arts Collection, comprising over 60 works including paintings, ceramics and wire sculptures from 1994 to 2011, has been held at Araluen Arts Centre in Alice Springs since 2000. Works by Keringke artists are held in national and international collections.
Keringke Arts at a glance
- Location: Keringke Crescent, Ltyentye Apurte (Santa Teresa), 81km southeast of Alice Springs, Northern Territory
- Language group: Eastern Arrernte
- Established: 1989; grew from a nine-week fabric-painting course in 1987; women-led art centre
- Art forms: Acrylic painting on linen and canvas; ceramics; wire sculpture; silk painting
- Style: Exquisitely fine, vibrant dot painting in bright colours; the Keringke style draws on Eastern Arrernte rock art, sand story and body painting traditions
- Founding artist: Kathleen Kemarre Wallace (1948–2024), custodian of the Keringke Dreaming place, 2001 Telstra NATSIAA finalist and senior cultural leader
- Collections: Araluen Arts Centre (Alice Springs), national and international collections
- Getting there: Via unsealed Santa Teresa Road; visitors welcome, call ahead recommended
