Profile... Quiet Innovator

Alison Milyika Carroll. Photo: Meg Hansen.

With a career spanning four decades senior pitjantjatjara yankunytjatjara woman Alison Milyika Carrol is recognised with the prestigious Red Ochre Award for lifetime achievement at the Australia Council for the Arts First Nations Awards 2020.

Words by Coby Edgar.

Coby is Assistant Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

You should never underestimate a quiet woman. They are usually the glue of a community. In the case of Alison Milyika Carroll, some may easily overlook her, distracted by the amazing man she shares her life with, her husband, the formidable artist, former police man, and cultural leader, Pepai Jangala Carroll. Others may become transfixed by the stories of cultural resistance and artistic excellence that occurred in her home of Pukatja (Ernabella). But, Alison Milyika Carroll didn’t just watch from the sidelines as it all happened; she is a glue that helps hold together the pieces of Pukatja and its legacy. She is the road maker, the innovator, and the decision maker. This year Alison has been given the title of most valuable player in the field, taking out the 2020 Red Ochre Award, for her lifetime achievements.

Over the last 60 years, Alison’s community has survived the colonial frontier, the livestock industry and its desecration of traditional lands, embraced the coming of Presbyterian missionaries who encouraged two ways of living, and not to mention the atomic weapons testing program at Maralinga. Regardless of all this change and trauma, Pukatja has always been a creative machine. Here, women learnt how to make yarn with spindles and wove beautiful mats. In the community’s earliest days they made batik works, and later they experimented and innovated their art practice by introducing pottery and painting. All the while, the men were building fences and drill wells for livestock, and additionally they built the town’s church. This is a beautiful building that brought the people of Pukatja together spiritually, and in a different way, a new way.

A singer in the famed Ernabella choir, a creator, and a decision maker on many art and community boards, there isn’t much that Alison hasn’t done. Her works are as confident as she, with a quiet and self-assured gestural quality to them, that is often only found in the works of an artist who has no doubts in their mind or body. They show the effect of muscle memory and unwavering assertion of cultural practice.

There is a tender and gentle femininity to Alison’s works. Highly detailed but naturally so, like a close up of a leaf or flower, they reveal a complexity that exists with such ease and balance that they can risk being overlooked as simple. Alison doesn’t shy away from the use of colour and bold patterns; she also doesn’t boast about her achievements and she demonstrates to younger generations that success has many faces. Hers is one that is humble, patient, kind, and one that is knowing. She is a living treasure, a woman of immense resilience. Women like Alison are the ones younger people need to look at to feel strong.

There is nothing that makes young people want to be custodians of their culture more than a leader who has a smile that comes from deep within her soul, combined with a happiness and hope that no one can rob her of. Alison is a truly rich person. If not to celebrate her, then let’s celebrate what she stands for, her people, culture and her Country.