Arlpwe Art and Culture Centre
Arlpwe Art & Culture Centre sits on Kaytetye Country in Ali Curung, an Aboriginal community about 400km north of Alice Springs. The Art Centre opened in 2008, and the name ‘Arlpwe’ (pronounced Ahl-boa) was chosen for the Art Centre by the Traditional Owners.
We represent artists from the Kaytetye, Alyawarr Warlpiri and Warumungu nation. Ali Curung, or Alekarenge, means Dog Dreaming or 'belonging to the dog'.
Dreamtime stories have a physical trace in the landscape — specific landscape features relate to specific parts of stories that travel through the landscape, waterways and the sky. In Kaytetye, the Dreamtime is called Altyerre. In Alyawarr Altyerr, In Warlpiri Jukurrrpa, and in Warumungu Winkara.
The landscape surrounding Ali Curung is very important for the Arlpwe artists. Local bush foods, bush medicines, water and animals are often the subject of their paintings. We were taught about the bush by our elders and extended families and know plants by their traditional names, in our four languages.
You can easily visit the Art Centre in person as we are on a sealed road just 22kms (12 minutes drive) off the Stuart Highway, between Alice Springs and Tennant Creek.
Courtesy of Arlpwe Art & Culture Centre
Artworks
Artist Profile/s
Marcus Camphoo 'Double 0'
Marcus ‘Double O’ Camphoo Kemarre was born at Murray Downs in 1992. He is a Kaytetye and Alywarr man who lives and works between Ali Curung (Kaytetye Country) and Tennant Creek (Warumungu Country). Double O began painting in 2017 as part of the Tennant Creek Men’s Centre art program which would go on to become the much-acclaimed Tennant Creek Brio and has painted with Arlpwe Art and Culture Centre since 2020.
Double O’s painting practice consists predominantly of a small handful of deceptively simple grid-and-band compositions, seemingly guided by a set of fluid formulas and mental Mathematics that he applies to his work. Active, loose brushstrokes apply a border around the canvas before lines are carved across, creating the skeleton of the work. Paint is pushed and poured across the empty space, bleeding into the frame.
At scale, the work forces an intimacy with the viewer and resonate like portals reaching into space, the artist’s psyche or an altogether different dimension. They have been likened to the aesthetic of central desert ceremonial body painting, the structural frames upon which they are painted and window or building shapes of children’s painting – a common remark from the ladies’ painting studio says that he is painting the windows of all the houses he visits as he roams around Ali Curung. Many have drawn a line between Double O’s grids and his namesake Mark(us) Rothko’s colour field paintings, while his rapid mark making has drawn allusion to that of preeminent Australian abstract expressionist Tony Tuckson.
Marcus has exhibited prolifically alongside the Tennant Creek Brio and made his solo debut at 8 Hele in 2024. His work has been collected in Australia by Araluen Art Centre and the NGV and by Foundateion Opale in Switzerland. Marcus' work also belongs to multiple important private collections.
Courtesy of Arlpwe Art and Culture