Strong Women Strong Painting Strong Culture
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- This is an exhibition of contemporary art made by women living in central Australia. Many of the artists are from what has become known as the Western Desert notably the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands in the far north east of South Australia and the Ngaanyatjarra Lands adjacent in Western Australia.
The works in this exhibition are about the present, even when their subject matter is Tjukurpa. This is a religious term glossed as the ‘Dreaming’ in English, a period when features of the land were created by the actions of Ancestors who finally went into the ground or the sky where they remain today. Living people care for the Ancestors through ceremonies and, by performing these, access Ancestral power and energy.
A quarter of this exhibition is drawn from the collection of the UQ Anthropology Museum and includes new acquisitions; work by Sally Mulda and Niningka Lewis that tell different kinds of stories; batiks made in the 1980s and ‘90s on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands by Tjunkaya Tapaya, Anna Curley, Patjiparan and Tjalumi Mervin. Women first learnt batik- drawing with wax and colouring with dyes - in 1971 at Ernabella. It is a medium for which they were well known until the recent resurgence of painting on canvas. We have hung batiks with paintings here allowing them to connect.
There are also crowbars from the Museum’s collection along with women’s camping and cooking equipment. Making some of these art works, the wooden sculptures called punu for example, is hard graft involving much digging with crowbar and shovel.
Perhaps the most culturally important work here is the three-quarter life size tjanpi / grass sculptural group of the Minyma Kutjara / Two Women. It shows events at a particular place; the women are resisting the man who has followed them. Materializing the figures of Ancestors like this for wider audiences is an innovation of the last few years.
Most of the artists are multi-lingual and do not use English as a first language.
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