Julie Anderson

Finke NT

Julie has taken to basket weaving with a passion and displays a naturally wonderful sense of colour within her artworks. Julie produces new work every week, with her focus being on baskets made from tjanpi, raffia, and sometime wipiya (emu feathers). Julie has said she likes making Tjanpi because it keeps her occupied and while she is making it she can just concentrate on Tjanpi, nothing else. Julie is one of the current elected directors of NPY Women's Council.

Julie Anderson was born in 1956 at Victory Downs Station, 300 kilometres south of Alice Springs near the South Australian border. As a child Julie lived at Victory Downs and had two sisters. Julie learnt English on the station and as she got older she worked here as a station hand. She remembers tourists passing through on their way to Uluru.

In 1983 Julie moved from Victory Downs to the community of Finke NT to be closer to her mother. When she first moved to Finke, Julie worked at the store, cleaning and stocking shelves, and then later she worked at the school as a cleaner and groundskeeper. During this time Julie also made punu artworks for Maruku Arts. From 2001 to 2003 Julie had to live in Alice Springs for dialysis. In 2004 Julie travelled to Adelaide for a kidney transplant and was able to move back to Finke after this as she no longer needed dialysis.

It was in 2018 when Julie found herself back on dialysis and living in Alice Springs again that fellow Tjanpi artist Margaret Smith taught Julie how to make her first basket.

 

Group Exhibitions

2020 November     One and Another, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne

2020 April              Wrapped, Woven and Wound, The JamFactory, Adelaide SA

2019 August           Ngalya/Together, Koskela, Sydney NSW

 

Awards

2019                      Vincent Lingiari Art Award, DesArt, Tangentyere Arts Centre, Alice Springs, NT - Finalist