Alison Munti Riley was born c 1975 and is a leading mid generation artist of the APY Lands. She grew up at Pukatja (Ernabella) , and lived there until 1990 when her family moved to Amata, another community in the APY Lands. She learned to paint and make batik at school at Ernabella and then with Ernabella Arts and continued her artistic career from the mid 2000s at Tjala Arts while living at Amata.
Her work developed in fluency and vitality as she developed her already well honed artistic skills while working with Tjala Arts and became noted for its glowing colours and impressive design, quickly becoming highly sought after when shown in leading galleries around Australia. Around 2013 she returned to her birth place of Ernabella where she continues to paint with Ernabella Arts.
Established in 1948, Ernabella is the oldest art centre in Australia and is well known for representing thework of painters, ceramicists, weavers and batik makers of top quality.
For the last several years Alison has chosen as her subject matter for many of her paintings, the country that she remembers so well as a child in its 'olden days’ - the lush state it was in before the invasion of therenowned buffle grass which has spread throughout much of Australia’s interior, overtaking native grasses and leading to the vast reduction in native fauna and other flora as the result. Occasionally she will include subtle depictions of animals such as the perentie lizard (one of the main dreaming stories of her Pitjantjatjara people) in her work to reinforce the interconnectedness of creation stories, their lands, the plants and the wildlife. As such, her paintings of this subject form a gentle environmental commentary while simultaneously representing an inherent dreaming stories.
Combined with the fine aesthetic for which her work is noted, this narrative gives her work a unique resonance and depth. In 2012 Alison was a finalist in the leading Aboriginal art award, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award and she won the People’s Choice award of that award the same year.
Her work has been included regularly in the annual Desert Mob exhibition of work by art centres in Alice Springs and been singled out for praise by reviewers of that exhibition.
Her work is included in the collections of the Art Gallery of South Australia and Queensland Art Gallery and is in the collections of a number of leading private collectors around Australia.
