A PLACE CALLED UTOPIA I arrived in Australia during the last days of 1993 with a return ticket to England where I was an artist and a university senior lecturer. I'd planned to stay for a month, but remained for twenty-five years. My English paintings had reflected my passion for the extraordinary life force in nature, but my art practice and life dramatically changed in Australia. I became fascinated by the paintings of one elderly Aboriginal Anmatyerre woman artist. Emily Kngwarreye lived in the remote semi-arid red centre of the country at the Aboriginal outstation of Utopia. In a chance meeting, I met her niece, Stolen Generation artist Barbara Weir. She asked me to transcribe her life stories and those of her Auntie Emily. Thus began a five-year collaboration at Utopia between 1998 and 2005 transcribing her stories and those of twelve Aboriginal women artists in Barbara's extended family. Being with them and witnessing their extraordinary culture and the power of the natu...