Artworks

Spotlight ON: NYARAPAYI GILES

Nyarapayi Giles, a Ngaanyatjarra woman, began painting on canvas while settled in Patjarr Community, when the Modern Desert Art Movement sprung from Papunya Tula and gained astounding momentum. She has been described as a “first contact” woman as her youth was lived nomadically in the Gibson Desert. Giles painted between various communities in Ngaanyatjarra Lands until 2006 when Tjarlirli Art was established in Tjukurla Community, which lies between Kintore and Kaltukatjara (Docker River) resting on the banks of saltwater Lake Hopkins, its surrounding landscape bearing sandhills, claypans and desert oak trees. Karrku, where Giles was born, is an important cultural site associated with the Karlaya Tjukurrpa (Emu Dreaming) in which emus are rumoured to have gone digging in the local ochre deposit for the fine-grained powder that, when combined with water, transforms into a red, sanguineous substance. Red ochre, such as that found at Karrku, holds ceremonial weight, used in initiative body painting and later by artists on canvas.

- Antonia Crichton-Brown, excerpt from artist's biography.

Spotlight ON: MONA MITAKIKI SHEPHERD

Art is not only a pedagogic tool for Anangu, but a site of collaboration between different generations of women in their family groups. The exhibiting artists represent the three important artistic families in Amata − the Burtons, the Mitakikis and the Kens − who often work collaboratively. The role of women artists who are teachers to the next generation of painters can be likened to that of the eldest of the Seven Sisters, whose responsibility it was to pass on her knowledge to her younger sisters to ensure their survival. Kunmanara (Mona Mitakiki) Shepherd was, before her death in 2023, the oldest painter in Amata, and painted with Tjimpayi Presley and Naomi Kantjuriny under the Mitakiki Women’s Collaborative. All three women shared the same teacher, Kunmanara (Tjampawa Katie) Kawiny, and learnt their particular style of painting from her. This genealogy of style is shown in Minyma Ninti Pulka: Wise Women through a comparison between Kunmanara Shepherd’s Seven Sisters and Presley and Kantjuriny’s Kapi Tjukula Tjuta (Many Rock Holes). Both paintings are composed of two central vertical passages, surrounded by small, tightly spaced circles representing kapi tjukula. While their titles suggest that these works subjects are different, their compositional and representational similarities reinforce the connections of landscape, story, family and style shared between all three artists. Although not originally from Amata, Barbara Mbitjana Moore summarises painting’s importance for intergenerational learning saying, “Through my painting I’m teaching my daughters and grandchildren too. I’m doing this for my family − it’s all about my family.”

- Antonia Crichton-Brown, excerpt from curatorial commentaries.

SPOTLIGHT ON: MABEL JULI

Painted in 1999, when Mabel Juli was sixty-six years of age, Bush Turkey and Emu Ngarranggarni depicts the events of the creation which took place long ago... The centre-most figure of Juli’s painting represents the Wiyarril (Emu), which is brought forwards from the canvas’ earthen background by white dot-work couching a black ochre outline. Its flanking, tawny-coloured figures, representing the Bingirrlbul (Bush Turkey Woman), create a hypnotic symmetry, mirroring each other in their slight genuflection towards the central figure. Their symmetry animates the painting, creating a circularity between them as if they are engaged in conversation. Movement is similarly indicated by the line of dots running across the bottom of the canvas, illustrating the road on which the Wiyarril and Bingirrlbul travelled together. Juli’s use of natural ochres to depict this historical moment emulates the crucial relationship between the East Kimberley’s landscape and the ancestors who once walked through it. In Juli’s work, earth pigments such as ochres symbolise the land itself, while the figures she renders with these pigments encode the creation of the land from the ancestors’ metamorphosis.

Spotlight ON: RALPH ANDERSON

In each of the works in Dig there is a tension between the processes of memorialisation and erasure which is carried out by the similarly opposing expressive and measured forces, as in Llandudno Promenade (2024). Though initially representational, Anderson’s marks become gradually more evocative, using broad gestures to mark the canvas, subsequently adorning his work with an inimitable quality. This articulates a contrast of form: whilst stemming from the same inherent action of marking the surface, the urge to rationalise, introduced by hints of realism, is obscured and interrupted by the physicality of the asemic paint. These marks, which evade meaning altogether, instead favouring mere allusion in a deconstruction of representation, seem at times to destabilise rather than consolidate the past, even as they invoke it. In archaeological terms, a ‘dig’ displaces layers of earth and the deposits of time, to reclaim the remains of history – a metaphor which can be extended to Anderson’s work. His erasure of said marks is intentional; it is a calculated process. Though at first seemingly contrary to our presupposed associations of an inherently destructive act, his painstaking removal of layers of paint, often conducted over many months, becomes emblematic of a fragmentary recollection of the past. It is as though the gradual nature of the practice, combined with the haziness of the final product, enacts the indistinctness of memory.

- Chloe Redston, excerpt from Archaeology of Form.

SPOTLIGHT ON: HUBERT PAREROULTJA

A particularly vibrant work from Weer Loo - The Cry of the Curlew is Looking Towards the James Range, an acrylic depiction of a winding valley path, painted in  reds, browns and blues. It is clear is that the landscape depicted is in a process of transformation. We see this in the shift from yellow to red as the left slope meets its opposite hill; in the trees, some bare and others flourishing; and the pale blue vapours, which hint at coming rain. Whether or not Pareroultja intended this landscape as a metaphor for his life is unknown, but comparisons between the two seem inevitable: a path forged between two opposing hills, for instance, can be interpreted as a metaphor for a life lived between two worlds, with "... one foot in the Lutheran ways and one foot in the Arrernte culture" (Ken McGregor, in conversation with the author), or as Pareroultja himself puts it, living "... both ways..." (Hubert Pareroultja, in conversation with the author). 

- Julius Killerby, excerpt from curatorial commentaries.