Tarnanthi at AGSA

Each year Tarnanthi showcases independent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists working in cities and regional towns, as well as artists who live in communities and work at their community art centres. In 2017, the exhibition brings together over 200 artists from across the country, beginning close to home with a focus on artists from South Australia’s Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands.

Vestibule

Kent Morris’ kaleidoscopic photographs, titled Unvanished, greet visitors in the Gallery’s vestibule; his mandala-like landscapes a meditation on displacement and connection, refraction and unity.

G7 and Studio

In the Atrium and the Studio, visitors encounter an immersive installation of woven marine life sculptures, made from ghost nets (discarded fishing nets), by artists from Erub, Darnley Island, in the Torres Strait Islands.

G8

Under Pressure, curated by Dennis Golding and Tess Allas, presents a selection of prints made at Cicada Press at the University of New South Wales. The works in Under Pressure reveal denied historical truths, political truths and familial truths.

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Painting remains a sustained and celebrated practice across the APY Lands, as showcased in the Desert Salon. Works by established and emerging artists sit alongside one another, including Barbara Mbitjana Moore and Yaritji Young from Tjala Arts in Amata; Betty Kuntiwa Pumani from Mimili Maku Arts in Mimili; Taylor Wanyima Cooper, Imitjala Curley and Witjiti George from Kaltjiti Arts in Fregon; and Alec Baker, Vicki Cullinan and Peter Mungkuri from Iwantja Arts in Indulkana.

Also from the APY lands, Painting on Country features a series of large-scale photographs created by artists from Tjungu Palya Arts. Using tutu (natural pigment), the artists have painted their Tjukurpa directly onto Country, with photography bearing witness to these ephemeral acts. In a series of arresting paintings titled Outside Man, Nyaparu William Gardiner shares his life experiences and introduces us to the characters he has encountered working on stations and in mines throughout the Pilbara in Western Australia.

Moving away from painting, Shirley Macnamara’s sculpted baskets and objects are imbued with power from spinifex, feathers and bones found on her property – Mount Guide Station near Mount Isa in Queensland; Jimmy Pompey and Eric Kunmanara Barney have worked with wax for the first time to sculpt a series of bronze sculptures in Camels, Bullocks and Brumbies; and from Baluk Arts in Victoria, Tallara Gray and Lisa Waup create exceptional contemporary jewellery and objects using traditional techniques incorporating found and locally sourced natural materials.

G10

The Kulata Tjuta video is a six channel moving image work that is one of the components of the major installation The Kulata Tjuta Project, on display in Gallery 11. Its footage reveals the artists personal recollections of atomic bomb testing that occurred on APY Lands between 1956-1963, with many people speaking publicly for the first time.

In Tjukurpa Kunpu Mulapa artists Kunmanara Mumu Mike Williams, Sammy Dodd and Willy Muntjantji Martin from Mimili Maku Arts repurpose Australia Post mailbags as canvases, hung from kulata (spears), asserting their place as traditional owners of Anangu land.

G11

The Kulata Tjuta Project is a major collaborative installation of suspended kulata (spears), crafted by Anangu male artists, that hover over hand carved piti (wooden bowls) created by Anangu women artists. In total 59 Anangu artists from across the APY Lands have collaborated to express their shared personal experiences of the atomic bomb testing that occurred on their Country between 1956 and 1963.

G23A

In related collaborative works, twenty-three Anangu men from across the APY Lands have created a monumental tribute painting titled Kulata Tjuta – A work for Kunmanara (Gordon) Ingkatji. This act of solidarity is echoed in a major collaborative painting by twenty-four Anangu women, who paint their shared Tjukurpa in their work Kungkarangkalpa – Seven Sisters. To accompany the paintings, Robert Fielding has created a series of black-and-white portraits of thirty-two of the artists, capturing the photographs at each of the sites to mark the significance of these gatherings.

Yuta Mulkurr, New Minds is a showcase of short experimental films and visual moments by artistic duo Gutingarra Yunupingu and Mundatjngu Mununggurr, assisted by Kade McDonald from the Mulka Project in Yirrkala, northeast Arnhem Land.

G23B

The paintings of Taylor Wanyima Cooper from Kaltjiti Arts and Nyunmiti Burton of Tjala Arts, continue the APY Lands Desert Salon.

These works are complimented by the twelve-metre long three-channel video OA_RR by Reko Rennie, featuring a camouflage over-painted gold 1973 Rolls-Royce Corniche and accompanied by a melodic score by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

For the project What if this photograph is by Albert Namatjira? contemporary artists from Iltja Ntjarra/Many Hands Arts Centre have responded to photographs from the Battarbee Collection – photographs taken by Rex Battarbee, and possibly Albert Namatjira, during the formative time the two artists spent together in western Arrernte country in the 1930s.

G23C

The Gallery pays tribute to Kwementyay (Gladdy) Kemarre, from Camel Camp, Utopia to the northeast of Alice Springs by exhibiting two large-scale paintings. Her recently completed sacred Bush Plum sits alongside Sorry Mob, the two works painted ten years apart. From Upungalindum, also in the region of Utopia, Josie Kunoth Petyarre has painted an immersive large-scale celebration of her Sugar Bag ancestral creation story. Tiger Yaltangki’s Big Story and Betty Muffler’s Ngayuku Ngangkari Ngura (My Healing Country), both from Iwantja Arts, carry the dynamic and innovative painting practices of the APY Lands into Gallery 23.

Important story telling continues in the work of Yarrenyty Arltere Artists from the Larapinta Valley Town Camp, who have made a series of soft sculptures of life-sized self-portraits, titled Every face has a story, every story has a face: Kulila! In the performance piece, We are all animals, trans-disciplinary artist Nicole Monks becomes Sheemu, a hybrid being comprising a sheep and an emu. Patju Presley from Spinifex Arts Project depicts the Emu Tjukurpa in his evocative large-scale painting Walkamata. And in PolyAustralis, Worimi artist Dean Cross has painted the ‘black’ into photographic portraits of renowned Australian expatriates, taken by Polly Borland.

G24

The Jirrawun Collection showcases four highly accomplished artists from Jirrawun Arts, an artist-led organisation in Wyndham, Western Australia, operating from 1998-2010. The 2015 photographic series poignantly titled Saddened Were the Hearts of Many Men, by Ricky Maynard, captures studio portraits of twelve Tasmanian elders. And from Western Arnhem Land, Bob Burruwul and Lena Yarinkura present their ambitious installation recalling the terrifying story of Bob’s personal experience of Namorrorddo.

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Alec Baker, Peter Mungkuri and Jimmy Pompey have made a spaghetti western, Never Stop Riding, a short film created while sharing their life experiences with younger men on a men’s camp at Welbourn Hill, a local cattle station near Indulkana.

In Mark and Memory, painter and ceramicist Pepai Jangala Carroll travelled with fellow ceramicist Derek Jungurrayi Thompson on a 1200-kilometre journey to visit their grandparents’ Country, each responding to the experience with a new body of work. Auto-biography continues in the moving-image work Petrol been wasting all our lives, from the Yarrenyty Arltere Artists of Larapinta Valley Town Camp. And, Vincent Namatjira’s satirical paintings Gina, Donald, Malcolm, Obama and Me infuse autobiography with humour and cheek.

Andy Snelgar from Taree in New South Wales uses carving techniques recalled from the past to create finely crafted shields and clubs; artists from Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency in Fitzroy Crossing have created bright and bold free-flowing acrylic paintings on metal; and Meeyakba features a collection of highly expressive paintings of the Western Australian landscape by pre-eminent Nyoongar artist, Shane Pickett.

Nonŋgirrŋa Marawili from Yirrkala in northeast Arnhem Land has created a suite of compelling bark paintings and fellow Yolŋu artist Nawurapu Wunuŋmurra presents an immersive installation of larrakitj (memorial poles). Titled Waŋupini (Cloud) to mark the clouds that form at the beginning of the monsoon season when the Macassan and Bugis fisherman from Sulawesi would travel to Arnhem Land in their prau with the assistance of the trade winds. The filmmaker Ishmael Marika has composed a moving-image component to accompany this work, featuring historical footage of the traditional dance performed by Yolŋu to welcome and greet the fishermen to northeast Arnhem Land.