Allery Sandy is a slim, graceful, grey-headed Yindjibarndi woman who took up painting in an arts group in Roebourne, a remote town in the Pilbara, Western Australia, just two years ago.

Recently she was one of 23 artists from the Pilbara who were flown to Perth by the Rio Tinto Indigenous Arts Partnership. Originally Rio Tinto had approached the Shire of Roebourne to bring together 40 paintings to mark Rio Tinto Iron Ore’s 40 years of operations in the Pilbara.

In fact more than 120 paintings and artefacts ended up on exhibition in Perth’s Council House; most of them pre-sold before the exhibition was officially opened.

Allery’s evocative painting of the Pilbara’s red, rolling, spinifex covered hills is, like all the pictures on display, of the land and though painted from memory is infused with a deeply profound sense of place.

The artistic interpretation of the land by Indigenous artists has lately raised such international interest that in February 2006 Rio Tinto, along with the Pilbara Development Commission and others, flew seven of them to Florence, Italy, to exhibit their work; the first time an exhibition of Pilbara Indigenous painting had been seen outside Australia.

Clifton Mack, who, during a special presentation at the Council House had two of his paintings accepted into permanent collection in the Art Gallery of Western Australia, said the artists had been given a personal tour of the famous Uffizi museum.

Indigenous artists

Susan Bung, who has been painting for seven years but who was unable to go to Florence was consoled by the fact that one of her works was recently gifted by Rio Tinto to the Japanese embassy in Canberra.

Yet it isn’t solely to help them make a living that Rio Tinto Iron Ore is partnering with the artists. As Sam Walsh, Chief Executive Officer of Rio Tinto Iron Ore said at the Council House presentation, “our involvement is a public acknowledgment of the fact that Rio Tinto has a responsibility of sustaining the land.”

For the artists themselves the payoff is more personal: self-fulfilment and emotional satisfaction.

Or, as Allery says in the story plaque accompanying her picture, “the colours are so beautiful it fills my heart.”