Initiatives of Change Australia Presents its Annual Charity Fundraising Art Auction

February 15, 2022

Painted Stories — Women of the Central Australian Desert: Aboriginal Art Auction 2022, features First Nations female artists from Utopia, in the Central Australian Desert.

As the oldest continuous culture on earth, First Nations people have been living on this soil for thousands of years. They’ve also been making art — first on rocks, in what is considered some of the world’s oldest displays of art. The form and content of early images was based on sand mosaics, drawn on sand or painted on bodies and sacred objects.

This extraordinary culture can now be seen through contemporary Australian Aboriginal artwork on canvas. Unique in style, and often tied to significant parts of  an artist’s land, kinship or totem, each work tells its own story.

The IofCA Aboriginal Art Auction 2022 is raising funds to support the IofCA Trustbuilding Project, (part of IofC International’s award winning Trustbuilding Program). Developed in partnership with First Nations Leaders, the project creates opportunities for truth hearing and truth telling about past and present injustices, builds relationships of trust and respect, inspires a new understanding, promotes First Nations culture, and creates advocates for change – empowering First Nations voice, self-determination and reconciliation.

The artworks on sale have been ethically sourced by Margo Birnberg, who has a long association with IofCA, as both a member and volunteer. 

Margo Birnberg handing over the art work to IofCA Executive Officer, Margaret Hepworth. Armagh, January 2022.

Margo has travelled extensively in Australia and has established an ongoing 45 year ethical relationship with Mob.  In the 1970’s, whilst travelling through the Gibson Desert in Western Australia, Margo met two First Nations people, Warri and Yatungka, a Mandjildjarra couple, who were still living a way of life that had not changed in thousands of years. Margo and her family were the first white people they had encountered. In Papunya in the Northen Territory, Margo closely associated with Geoffrey Bardon, a young teacher of visual arts, who had came to the Aboriginal settlement in 1971. Geoffrey encouraged the artists to paint on pieces of cardboard, a very new concept to them.

Margo is an accomplished author and poet. Her book Dreaminglines introduces you to her Aboriginal friends and invites you to experience their immense traditional knowledge and culture.