PURPLE HOUSE
“We have painted this painting to help our family and our future. The pampa’s (old ladies) worked with the young women, we are training the young ones when we paint together. Training them to be strong artists and strong leaders. This painting is a women’s painting, telling the story of women travelling to special places for ceremony. These stories and places keep us strong.”
Purple House: Providing dialysis in the most remote parts of Australia
Remote Indigenous people in Central Australia are 15 to 30 times more likely to suffer from kidney disease caused by a wide variety of factors. Often, families must move off their country to seek dialysis treatment in Alice Springs. Consequently, communities are left without elder leadership, families are broken and culture is weakened. Patients suffer from isolation and depression, restricted by a dialysis machine for their foreseeable future.
Purple House aims to improve the lives of people who have kidney disease by providing dialysis services and health education in remote communities so that families and culture can remain strong.
As an increasing number of Anangu are forced to leave their homes and families for renal dialysis treatment, there has a rigorous campaign to establish the Pukatja Dialysis Centre in Ernabella, South Australia. In conjunction with the TARNANTHI festival in 2017, Purple House and the APY Art Centre Collective held a major auction to raise funds to secure this outcome.
Works of art were donated by artists from all seven art centres from the APY Art Centre Collective. Works available include paintings, ceramics, work on paper, wood carving, photography and printmaking. Find out more about the work of Purple House.