Artonview 107 - Spring 2021

CEREMONY Dr Matilda House and Paul Girrawah House Ngambri and Ngunnawal Traditional Custodians

The National Gallery of Australia extends a special thanks to

Indigenous Arts Partner for exhibitions and programs including the 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony, Ever Present: First Peoples Art of Australia and the Wesfarmers Indigenous Arts Leadership Program

Mabel Juli, Gija people, Wardal and Garnkeny, 2011, The Wesfarmers Collection of Australian Art, Whadjuk Boodja Country/ Perth © Mabel Juli/Copyright Agency, 2021.

This work will be featured in Ever Present: First Peoples Art of Australia, a National Gallery Touring Exhibition supported by Wesfarmers Arts, which opens 9 December at the Art Gallery of Western Australia before travelling to the National Gallery Singapore in 2022.

Contents

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James Tylor How to create a daguerreotype

Mantua Nangala The Western Desert art movement

Director’s Word

The Triennial Team | Contributors

Hetti Perkins on Ceremony

Dr Matilda and Paul Girrawah House The custodial bond to scar trees

S.J Norman Working with Walgalu language on the Bone Library

On the cover Dr Matilda House and Paul Girrawah House, Ngambri/Ngunnawal peoples, with scar tree, Kamberri/ Canberra, 2021 © the artists.

On the back cover Paul Girrawah House, Ngambri/Ngunnawal peoples, scar tree, Kamberri/Canberra, 2021 © the artist.

This page Nicole Foreshew, Wiradjuri people, study for work in progress, 2021, image courtesy and © the artist.

Studio Spotlight Penny Evans

Mind Your Language

Gutiŋarra Yunupiŋu Communicating Country

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Blak Power Mparntwe artists and the Blak Parliament

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One Fine Day Hayley Millar Baker documents a day in her life

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Joel Bray Performance, culture and queer identity

Groundswell First Peoples activists for climate justice

The Absence of Sound Joel Spring and E Fishpool connect sound, Country and ceremony

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Dylan River Keeping storytelling in the family

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Portfolio Meet the Ceremony artists

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Family Ties In conversation with Hetti Perkins

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Wesfarmers Indigenous Arts Leadership Program

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Ceremony artists and project team with National Gallery Director Nick Mitzevich, from left: Peter Johnson, Curator, Projects; artist Penny Evans, Kamilaroi/Gomeroi people; Aidan Hartshorn, Walgalu/Wiradjuri peoples, Wesfarmers Assistant Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art; Georgina Whigham, Exhibitions Designer; artist Robert Andrew, Yawuru people; Traditional Custodian Dr Matilda House, Ngambri/Ngunnawal peoples, artist Andy Snelgar, Ngemba people; Nick Mitzevich; artist S.J Norman, Wiradjuri people; Hetti Perkins, Arrernte/ Kalkadoon peoples, Senior Curator-at-Large, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art; Kelli Cole, Warumungu/Luritja peoples, Curator, Special Projects, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art.

Spring 107 The National Gallery of Australia acknowledges the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which the Gallery stands, and recognises their continuous connection to culture, community and Country.

Artonview contains names and images of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have passed away. Where possible, permission has been sought to include their names and images.

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Editor Sophie Tedmanson

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Rights and Permissions Ellie Misios, Yvette Dal Pozzo

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Staff photographers Sam Cooper and Karlee Holland All images by the National Gallery of Australia unless otherwise stated.

© National Galley of Australia 2021 PO Box 1150, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia +61 (0)2 6240 6411 | nga.gov.au Follow Us

Published quarterly. Copyright of works of art is held by the artists or their estates. Every effort has been made to identify copyright holders but omissions may occur.

Views expressed by writers are not necessarily those of the National Gallery of Australia.

ISSN 1323-4552 ISSN 2208-6218 (Online) Printed by Adams Print, on FSC certified paper using vegetable-based inks, FSC-C110099

Director’s Word

Gooroo Burri, The National Indigenous Art Triennials are a part of the DNA of the National Gallery.

In the past 15 years, over four iterations, our Triennials have showcased works by more than 100 artists and helped bring new understanding and new audiences to the works of First Nations artists.

The Triennials follow a trajectory of focusing on major acquisitions of works by First Nations artists for the national collection that began with the Gallery’s founding Director, James Mollison. Four decades on we are the proud custodians of the world’s largest collection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, and one of the highlights of this is The Aboriginal Memorial that was acquired by James in 1987.

The first Triennial, Culture Warriors, which was curated by artist and then Senior Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, Brenda L. Croft, Gurindji/Malngin/Mudburra peoples, opened in 2007 to coincide with two key anniversaries: 40 years since the 1967 Referendum, whereby non-Indigenous Australians voted overwhelmingly to count Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on the Census for the first time as citizens; and the 50th anniversary of NAIDOC (National Aboriginal and Islander Day Observance Committee). It was a landmark exhibition – initiated by former Director Dr Ron Radford AM – that progressed the Gallery’s vision to advance First Nations art and perspectives across the collection and programs.

Three years later, in 2010, another important moment in the history of the Gallery occurred when we opened 11 dedicated galleries for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art.

This, combined with expanding the Triennial with a touring program, created an important cyclical program celebrating First Nations artists both on site and on tour. Culture Warriors was followed by unDisclosed in 2012, curated by Carly Lane, Kalkadoon people, then Defying Empire in 2017, curated

by National Gallery Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, Tina Baum, Larrakia/Wardaman/Karajarri peoples.

is exciting for us to broaden the scope of artists represented and engage with some who don’t conventionally work in a ‘gallery’ context.

I enjoyed meeting some of the Triennial artists who visited the Gallery in recent months – including S.J Norman, Wiradjuri people, Penny Evans, Kamilaroi/Gomeroi people, Andy Snelgar, Ngemba people, and Robert Andrew, Yawuru people – some of whom are featured in this collector’s edition of Artonview dedicated entirely to showcasing the Ceremony artists, their work and how it connects their community, culture and Country.

Gracing the cover are Dr Matilda House and her son, Paul Girrawah House, who are Traditional Custodians of Ngambri-Ngunnawal country, the Kamberri/Canberra region the National Gallery is located on. I am thrilled their work – a series of scar trees in the Sculpture Garden – will be featured in Ceremony as a permanent addition to the national collection.

Their installation in the Triennial is a significant legacy project not only for the Gallery, but also for the wider Ngambri/Ngunnawal landscape through Paul’s concept to expand the tree scarring project throughout the Parliamentary Triangle (read more on page 8). In Kamberri/ Canberra, long after Ceremony has finished, Aunty Matilda and Paul’s works will live on and be part of the proud tradition of celebrating First Nations artists at the National Gallery that began 40 years ago.

It was with great sadness that we learnt of the passing of artist Kunmanara Carroll in September. On behalf of the National Gallery and the Triennial artists we send our deepest sympathies to Kunmanara’s family and thank them for allowing us to showcase his works of art in Ceremony.

I hope you enjoy this issue, Nick Mitzevich

And now we’re thrilled that the 2022 Triennial, Ceremony, is led by National Gallery Senior Curator-at-Large Hetti Perkins, an Arrernte and Kalkadoon woman who is one of the country’s most experienced curators. Hetti is collaborating with a team of Gallery curators for Ceremony – Kelli Cole, Warumungu/Luritja peoples, Aidan Hartshorn, Walgalu/Wiradjuri peoples, and Peter Johnson – who collectively guest edited this special issue of Artonview (read more about Hetti and the team on pages 4, 5 and 62).

In her curatorial roles, Hetti looks at First Nations art from a national perspective and is passionate about highlighting the voices of the artists, which is an important part of he National Gallery remit. For Ceremony, Hetti has selected artists who have never been shown in our Triennials before, so it

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The Triennial team For the Curatorial and Exhibitions team, working as a collective led by Hetti Perkins has been integral to creating Ceremony. Here, the National Gallery Triennial team – Kelli Cole, Warumungu/Luritja peoples, Curator, Special Projects, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art; Aidan Hartshorn, Walgalu/Wiradjuri peoples, Wesfarmers Assistant Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art; Peter Johnson, Curator, Projects; Juliet Flook, Exhibitions Coordinator; and Georgina Whigham, Exhibitions Designer – together state what ceremony means to them.

Ceremony Always Was and Always Will Be integral to First Nations people. Ceremony has taken place since time immemorial and continues today.

Marlene Rubuntja and Nanette Sharpe The Yarrenyty Arltere and Tangentyere art centres represent many of the talented artists in Mparntwe/Alice Springs Town Camps.

For Ceremony, a group of artists from the two centres – led by Marlene (left) and including Nanette (below left), both of whom are Western Arrarnta women – have collaborated to create the soft sculpture Blak Parliament House.

On page 34 Marlene and Nanette talk about their art and the importance of their familial connections to Mparntwe’s art centres.

Susie Anderson Compassion, resistance and connection are the foundation of Susie Anderson’s writing practice.

She is a 2021 Black&Write! Fellow and is currently working on her first poetry collection. Descended from the Wergaia and Wemba Wemba peoples of Western Victoria, she currently lives on Boon Wurrung land in Naarm/Melbourne. Read Susie’s essay about the connection between Country and climate activism on page 44.

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There are various adaptations of what Ceremony represents, but for many it’s the act of doing and participating; this could be as definitive as the act of Ceremony in the ‘traditional’ sense of participation in cultural responsibilities and obligations.

But for others, due to colonisation, assimilation and the forced removal of First Nations people from their ceremonial lands, the practice of ceremony is now found in family, work, study, religion and within ‘contemporary lifestyle’. As a team of First Nations and non-Indigenous people, we all adhere to this principle. But for the two of us who are First Nations curators, it is also about maintaining active ceremonial links with our ancestral Country.

There have been many challenging facets to delivering an exhibition during these times and this is where relationships are so important. It has been a privilege to work alongside Hetti Perkins, who works in a familial culture of collaboration, and assist with delivering her vision of the 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony.

E Fishpool E Fishpool is a Budawang/Yuin sound artist based across Budawang and Ngunawal/Ngunnawal/ Ngambri Countries. E maps processes of unlearning and (re)learning identity through sampling sound, dialect and field recordings – creating immersive and introspective works. She joins artist Joel Spring in conversation on page 46.

Due to the scope of the National Gallery, collaboration within the institution relies on building and maintaining relationships across departments and is key to delivering an exhibition as significant as Ceremony. In many ways, working on the exhibition has established a new collaborative way for First Nations and non-Indigenous staff to work together.

Through reverence and autonomy, Hetti Perkins has created an empowering working environment that has forged a bond, and we have fallen into an act of doing and being around Ceremony.

Jake Terrey Fashion, art and culture photographer Jake Terrey’s work has featured in leading Australian publications such as Vogue Australia and Marie Claire. For this issue Jake captured Wiradjuri artist S.J Norman at his home studio during lockdown in Gadigal Country/ Sydney for the feature on page 14.

Over the past year, we have been fortunate to have been able to work with a selection of artists who inspire us daily and leave us in awe. Adapting to and coping with the issues around the pandemic has pushed many to the limits, and we would like to thank you all for your time, patience and generosity.

Contributor photographs: Leah Jing McIntosh, Nick Shaw, supplied

Contributors

Ceremony as a word or act can be encumbered for First Nations people. Since colonial occupation, policies have disempowered and marginalised the sovereignty of First Nations people. This includes the official dispossession of cultural identity as early as 1937, when the Australian Government introduced policies that banned and discouraged First Nations people from speaking their languages and participating in Ceremonial practices.

Contributor photographs: Leah Jing McIntosh, Nick Shaw, supplied

Curator’s Letter HETTI PERKINS, Arrernte/Kalkadoon peoples, Senior Curator-at-Large and curator of the 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony, which opens in 2022.

The 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony will open on Ngambri and Ngunnawal land with a ceremonial act. Paul Girrawah House, under the guidance of his mother, respected Elder and Traditional Custodian Dr Matilda House, will scar several trees in the National Gallery Sculpture Garden as a permanent installation. Carving designs onto, and objects from, living trees without harming them is a cultural practice distinctive to southeastern Aboriginal communities. These works are the beginning of a project he hopes will eventually encompass the entire Parliamentary Triangle.

Paul’s relationship to his matrilineal Country endures despite the encroachments that have seen the destruction of so many ‘old people’ trees. The settler violence perpetrated upon Aboriginal land is lamented in Wiradjuri dancer Joel Bray’s first film work, commissioned for Ceremony. Yet Joel emerges as the embodiment of the resilience of our cultural heritage to overcome the privations of colonisation: “Like fresh shoots appearing after a bushfire, there is hope.”

‘Ceremony’ is not a new idea in the context of our unique heritage, but neither is it something that only belongs in the past. In their works, the artists assert the prevalence of ceremony as a forum for artmaking today in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Our people still hold our ceremonial practices close. They are a part of our everyday lives. For instance, acknowledging Country is something all Australians should be conscious of wherever we are travelling in this beautiful land.

Ceremonies can be personal or collective acts of faith, intimate rituals or mass protests. One of Australia’s enduring protest actions, the Tent Embassy, will celebrate its 50th year during Ceremony. The Embassy and other demonstrations are about land rights, about expressing and asserting the inalienable connection of our people to our Country – a form of ceremony. It is a politically activated performative action.

so-called ‘dead’ First Nations languages through a live inscription, on this occasion collaborating with members of the Walgalu community to engrave the bones of “totemic colonial beasts” (sheep and cattle).

Like a formula that has an ‘active ingredient’ or ‘radical agent’, each work in Ceremony will have a performative element or purpose.

The idea of ‘active’ is central: works that are active; works that are activist; works that activate. The first iteration of the Triennial, Culture Warriors, curated by Brenda L. Croft, Gurindji/Malngin/Mudburra peoples, opened in 2007 to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Referendum and the 50th anniversary of NAIDOC. Subsequent editions – unDisclosed, curated by Carly Lane, Kalkadoon people, and Defying Empire, curated by National Gallery Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, Tina Baum, Larrakia/Wardaman/Karajarri peoples – have consolidated a First Nations-led and -centred major survey exhibition within the Australian cultural landscape. In this way, the National Gallery acknowledges the first people of this country, who are the inheritors of the world’s oldest continuous cultural tradition.

Wiradjuri artist Nicole Foreshew collaborated with the late Booljoonngali, Gija people, on the Gemerre/Garraba project from 2017 to 2020, an innovative and unprecedented cross-generational and cross-country collaboration. Clay and ochre are commonly used in funeral rituals and Nicole’s installation for Ceremony will comprise clay vessels and portraits of the late artist’s hands imbued with ochre, alongside a major suite of Booljoonngali’s Gemerre paintings, recently acquired by the National Gallery. Nicole will also present a related work in the Gallery’s Australian Garden that centres on cultural healing with an immersive healing mist, scented with natural bush medicine that she harvests from the bushland surrounding her home studio in Coffs Harbour on the New South Wales north coast.

When Lake Burley Griffin was created in 1963, a ceremony ground near the current National Museum of Australia was flooded. In Ceremony, Anangu artist Robert Fielding will present a creatively resurrected abandoned car whose strategic positioning comments on the political annexing of Ngambri and Ngunnawal land. For Robert, these cars are laden with memory and symbolism: they are associated with the people who owned them and the journeys they took in their homelands.

As visitors to remote communities know, cars are a valuable commodity in enabling families to attend ceremonies and visit Country.

Ochre is a key element in Yawuru artist Robert Andrew’s ‘writing machines’, which employ open-source programmable technologies to create wall installations. Robert’s durational works reveal a word on an ochre wall by slowly eroding the outer layer of white paint.

Each of these artworks is site-specific, drawing on the language of the people on whose Country the work is located. For the Triennial, Robert has been gifted a word by Dr Matilda House. In his works, Robert reveals the ever present and culturally invested landscape of Aboriginal land beneath the topography of modern Australia, a poignant reminder when the 2021 NAIDOC theme is ‘Heal Country’.

Ceremonies can be public and private, secular and sacred, traditional and contemporary. Wiradjuri artist S.J Norman’s performance-based practice draws upon multiple lineages of ceremony within the contexts of “big-‘C’ ceremony and small-‘c’ ceremony”. S.J will perform an iteration of Bone Library where he considers the living essence of

The concept of iteration, in which each unique action is simultaneously new and old, is at the heart of ceremony. In the panoramic paintings

by Mantua Nangala, Pintupi people, the iterative action of meticulously applying lines of dots echoes not only the tali (sand dunes), but also the ritualised performance of ceremony. The commissioning of Mantua’s

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Above (top) Robert Fielding, Western Arrernte/Yankunytjatjara people, car sculpture featured in photographic series Graveyards in Between, 2017, image courtesy and © the artist and Mimili Maku Arts. Photograph: Jackson Lee; (bottom) Helen Ganalmirriwuy, Liyagawumirr/Garrawurra peoples, Milingimbi, 2018. image courtesy Milingimbi Art and Culture © the artist.

Photograph: Ben Ward.

Right Andy Snelgar, Ngemba people, carving a shield, Old Bar, NSW, 2021, image courtesy and © the artist. Photograph: Julie Slavin.

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large-scale triptych by the National Gallery is a first for the Mparntwe/ Alice Springs-based Papunya Tula Artists art centre and marks the 50th anniversary of its founding.

Ernabella Arts, founded in 1948, is Australia’s oldest art centre.

Ernabella – or Pukatja, a community in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands in South Australia – was home to Kunmanara Carroll, who left his ancestral lands in Pintupi Country as a teenager.

Following a return to visit his Country as an old man, Kunmanara repeatedly revisited sites of significance in his Country in his sgraffito ceramic forms. These beautifully organic stoneware objects become vessels of memory, each inscribed with a marker of place, whether it be the distinctive cruciform rockhole of Yumari or the sinuous line of Wanampi, the water serpent associated with Walungurru/Kintore.

Now living in Kamberri/Canberra, James Tylor, too, revisits his ancestral Kaurna Country through the lens of daguerreotype images.

The alchemical process of creating direct-positive images is suggestive of the merging of the ingredients of fact and fiction that becomes history. In employing a technique whose invention in the 1830s coincided with the passing of the South Australian Colonisation Act, James documents the ongoing effects of colonisation on his people in the present day.

Gamilaroi artist Penny Evans’s practice is inspired by time spent in Country, which is part of a broader decolonising process for the artist.

Penny’s installation BURN Gudhuwa-li is a series of burnt banksia forms in clay, exploring the cultural significance of fire and the devastating impact of failing to follow Aboriginal protocols of caring for Country. Penny’s banksia forms are anthropomorphic and suggest the inextricable connection of people and place, and the symbiotic relationship to fire developed over millennia.

The cataclysmic bushfires of recent years have led Wiradjuri researcher, artist and architect Joel Spring to reflect on “the sheer scale of what is lost, the silence created in its absence”. The performative action of listening is a central to Joel’s practice. As Joel finds, “really listening to it takes time … There’s something that reveals itself to you the more time you give to it. For me, from Wiradjuri culture, Wiradjuri Country, Wiradjuri language, that is yindyamarra. That is going slowly. That is showing respect. And when you show respect to something through listening, it reveals itself to you.”

Ngemba carver Andy Snelgar talks about finding the song in the tree and bringing that song out as he travels through Country looking for wood from trees or branches that have fallen on the ground. Andy first started carving under the instruction of his uncle Paul Gordon, a respected Ngemba-Gurru-Gillu Elder. Andy’s trademark delicate fluting and incising bring his unique sensibility and ancient heritage into seamless confluence, expressing the ongoing significance of these objects and, by association, ceremony in the contemporary experience of Aboriginal communities in the southeast.

Carving within a ceremonial context is a key practice of Bard and neighbouring communities throughout the western Kimberley region.

Darrell Sibosado’s contemporary experience informs works that draw on the rich heritage of riji, the incised designs on pearl shells that are the scales of Aalingoon, the Rainbow Snake. Traditional riji symbolise features of the natural landscape, sacred sites, flora and fauna, and ceremony grounds. Mapping the movement of people to, during and from ceremony into meaningfully abstract designs is an integral part of Darrell’s cultural cartography.

Yolŋu ceremonies “have always been and will always be the backbone” for Gutiŋarra Yunupiŋu as a member of the Gumatj clan of the Yirritja moiety, an identity that is intrinsically connected to his Country.

The name Yunupiŋu refers to a significant rock in the sea and his family totem is the bäru (crocodile). Gutiŋarra draws on the coastal landscape of his homeland in northeast Arnhem Land to create filmic ‘selfportraits’ at the Mulka Project – a digital library and production centre in Yirrkala. Of his commissioned work for the Triennial, Maralitja, Gutiŋarra explains: “As Maralitja, I am performing the buŋgul (dance) of bäru. Bäru comes from the saltwater, I come from the saltwater.”

Dylan River also tells stories that are close to home and is well known for his work in film and television, as are members of his immediate Glynn, Thornton and McDonald families. For the Triennial, Dylan returns to his ‘first love’ of still photography that led him to cinematography.

It is his Kaytetye homeland north of the desert capital that we see literally through Dylan’s eyes in a technically ambitious work. Using a specialist Phase One large-format camera with a macro lens, Dylan will capture a vista of his Country as reflected in the lens of his eye.

In her first foray into filmmaking, Hayley Millar Baker, Gunditjmara people, invites the audience not just into her (fictional) home, but also into her head. Working in a new genre aligns with a shift in Hayley’s conceptual imperatives. “I’m now positioning myself as the narrator and basing stories on myself as a multidimensional human being, while at the same time stepping away from fixed narratives, leaving the works open to more ambiguous interpretations, but always based on some sort of truth,” she says. The action in this intensely personal work primarily occurs in a domestic interior, reminiscent of the staging of earlier photographic series. Where the spiritual presences were once mutely glowing forms, in this cinematic work the characters with whom Hayley shares the ‘stage’ are unseen and only become ‘animate’ through their interaction with Hayley.

The fibre art of sisters and creative collaborators Margaret Rarru and Helen Ganalmirriwuy, Liyagawumirr/Garrawurra people, has a unique presence within the venerated tradition of weaving. Their darkly luminous bathi mol (black dilly bags), crafted from natural materials harvested from their homelands of Yurrwi/Milingimbi and Laŋarra/ Howard Island, embody the merging of past and present, the old and the new. Sacred objects, including the traditional conical mindirr (woven vessels), were carried by the ancestral Djan’kawu sisters.

As Rarru and Ganalmirriwuy immerse the gunga (pandanus spiralis) fibre in local and secret recipes of natural dyes to create their trademark mol (black) hues, so too their bathi and dupun (hollow logs) are steeped in Liyagawumirr and Garrawurra tradition. When asked what draws her to use mol in her works, Rarru says: “Because black is beautiful.”

One of the works commissioned for Ceremony that most obviously connects to Kamberri/Canberra is a Blak Parliament House by artists from the Yarrenyty Arltere and Tangentyere art centres in Mparntwe/ Alice Springs. This Aboriginal take on Australia’s political heartland, a collaboration by 16 artists led by Marlene Rubuntja, comprises a hand-sewn version of Parliament House complete with people having meetings and debates. Kamberri/Canberra is seen by many as a distant place where decisions are made that directly affect the lives of our people. Taking the form of fantastical soft sculptures, this installation will place our people centre stage and acknowledge the role of culture in the history of our political struggle. For Marlene, “In my head and heart, I grew all these ideas and I started feeling well again. Now I feel like a strong woman, I like talking for this place [the art centre], this art, because I want others to be encouraged to get strong also.”

The kinetic power of the performative act, actively iterated through any of the myriad artistic expressions that proliferate throughout our communities, makes us strong, as Marlene says. For Joel Spring, “linking back to our cultures, as always being passed down orally … builds sort of a muscle”. The concept of exercising our cultural muscle is an adept way of understanding that the connection to Country and culture is visceral. It’s what compels us to make art, to gather in solidarity for our community, culture and Country. S.J Norman directly evokes the corporeal connection when he writes, “Blood is such clever stuff: it has profound intelligence and a long memory. History is never history. It’s alive in the written and unwritten rules of our world.

It’s alive in our language. It’s alive in the depths of our bodies. This is something that is traditionally understood by Aboriginal people; that our bodies are of the land and the land is of our Ancestors. History is something to be understood viscerally.” In each ceremonial action, artists make an individual mark in this history. Ceremony is the nexus of Country, culture and community, and the 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony is another stitch in a timeless heritage. ● Ceremony opens in 2022

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Ngambri/Ngunnawal Traditional Custodians DR AUNTY MATILDA HOUSE and her son, PAUL GIRRAWAH HOUSE, will undertake the traditional practice of tree scarring – where the bark of a eucalypt is carved or removed to create cultural objects such as shields and coolamons – in the National Gallery Sculpture Garden for Ceremony. Here, Paul describes the custodial bond to the scar tree and their work Mulanggari yur-wang (alive and strong).

Nginha (this) article is dedicated to our Ngambri-Kamberri (Walgalu), Wallabalooa-Pajong (Ngunnawal) and Wiradjuri Ancestors (maradhal mayhyiny), particularly those matriarchal and patriarchal leaders who fought hard to hold on and maintain connection, cultural practices, kinship responsibilities, law and customary responsibilities to Country, pre- and post-contact invasion of the region.

Ngadhi yindyamali Biami, mudygali, buyaa, ngiyang, mayinygu ngurambang-gu (my respects to Biami, the great spirit, Mudygali, holy ghost, law, language, people and Country).

Ngadhi yindyamali budyan yibay mullein, yuukembruuk, waagan (my respects to our key totems Eaglehawk and Crow).

Yuwin-dhu Paul House (girrawah), Ngadhu marradhal marraybirang-gu gundyigang Ngambri ngurambang-gu (my name is Paul House girrawah, I was born on Ngambri Country at the old Kamberri/Canberra hospital).

Ngadhi ngama Dr Matilda House-Williams marradhal Erambie-Galari-Guwura. My mother, Dr Matilda House-Williams, was born and raised on Erambie-Cowra Aboriginal mission, Hollywood Aboriginal Reserve at Yass and Ngambri-Kamberri Country and has multiple Wiradjuri, Walgalu and Wallabalooa ancestries. My great-great-grandfather was Henry ‘Black Harry’ Williams, who was born in Namadgi (Ngama-dyi) circa 1837.

Henry was the tribal son of Ngambri-Kamberri Leader and Warrior Onyong, aka Jindoomung, who was given a traditional burial at Tharwa, overlooking the Murrumbidgee River, in 1852.

Scarred trees have always been an important part of my life.

I was shown by my mother and family members a number of significant ‘old people’ trees across Kamberri/Canberra, including canoes, coolamons, shields, possum holes, and pathway, medicinal, marker and resources trees. Our family relationship with local native trees is personal and ongoing, and has always been respectful. Yindyamarra bala walam-wunga-dhabu, Murru madhan-dha-bu, Bunma-yu marradhal gurrugambirra Ngambri-Walgalu, Wiradjuri, Pajong-Wallabalooa - Ngunnawal ngurambang-gu dhaura. Yindyamarra is in the grinding stones, and it is carved in the trees, made long ago, all over NgambriWalgalu, Wiradjuri, Pajong-Wallabalooa-Ngunnawal Country.

Madhan warrugarra wirimbirra gulbalanha

Growing up on Country, I developed a custodial relationship and bond with many scarred trees around the Kamberri/ Canberra landscape including Wanniassa/Tuggeranong, Australian National University, Coolamon, Goorooyarroo and Corroboree Park. Trees are important to our people and our way of life. All trees are our relatives and must be respected and protected. The trees nurture and provide homes for our budyans (birds) and safeguard our totems.

The spirit of our Ancestors and old people is in the trees. Trees help anchor our identity and belonging to Country – they hold knowledge, nurture and maintain the wellbeing of our people, plants and animals. Trees help maintain lore and custom. The old growth trees in the Parliamentary Triangle help keep the peace. They are our physical and spiritual guardians. They tell us how to be on Country. It’s a story that is part of truth-telling.

The contemporary marking of trees on Country and in the Parliamentary Triangle, which includes the National Gallery Sculpture Garden, is about many things, including the Spring 2021

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‘right of might’ approach – a right for our Ancestors and families to be acknowledged, respected and honoured.

The modern Parliamentary Triangle precinct – with Parliament House symbolically at the apex and encompassing the National Library of Australia, the High Court of Australia and the National Gallery at the base of the triangle – is based on a Eurocentric fixed boundary concept. The old trees in the precinct and surrounding Ngambri footprint are located and anchored in and by a First Nations layered territoriality: like the trees, we don’t change, rather we transform. The Ngambri never died out upon European invasion; our people survived, some have gone within. Like the old strong trees on Country, the Ngambri have survived and continue to speak for Country.

Many of our people are now within, and their spirit is all around us. The Parliamentary Triangle is surrounded by their spirit in the land and old trees. The trees want justice for our old people. The trees speak and understand the law of the land. The trees are the voice of Mother Earth. They speak the language of respect and justice for our people, they speak the language of Mudyigali and Biami, our protectors and creators. They are the voice and identity of the Ngambri.

In 1972, as a young boy, I was taken to the Aboriginal Tent Embassy by my mother. My mother spoke to me about fighting for Ancestral Country and justice for our old people. I remember the temporary relocation of the Tent Embassy to the top of Kurrajong (now Capital) Hill in the late 1970s. I explored and played on parts of the hill, where I once came across a family of ngurrumirrgang (blue-tongue lizards). The hill is a male site and provides sacred warrugang (red), warradagangngurrumirrgang-dhuray (yellow and purple) ochres.

Our people and values were never considered prior to or during the construction of the new Parliament House. Ngambri law was broken. Parliament House was built on broken law. White men and women (politicians and bureaucrats) become sick on Kurrajong. Because law has been broken, the Parliamentary precinct and process is filled with unnecessary sickness. The old growth trees and markings of trees will help heal and repair the sickness of government on our Country and place. The trees speak the language of the budyans and people. Trees look, listen and understand.

The contemporary marking of trees in the Parliamentary Triangle is about the reclaiming of Ngambri Country, identity and provenance. It’s about honouring the old people. The trees have been part of the Ngambri judicial, political and executive decision-making process long before Kamberri/Canberra was declared the capital in 1913 and Old Parliament House was completed in 1927. Our old Ngambri people were labourers and workers on Old Parliament House and the east wing building; they lived and camped on Kurrajong and Russell hills. The marking of trees standing strong on Country puts the Australian government on notice about speaking the truth, a reminder and prompt to respect everything living and growing. People, land, plants, animals, mountains, rivers and skies are all connected both physically and spiritually.

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If law is broken, then Biami seeks justice and destroys.

We have an unwritten contract with Biami, our creator and protector, to uphold the law. It’s an inclusive contract based on mutual respect, giving honour and respect to all people and parts of the country. Our Ngambri signature is in the land, not just our DNA. The historical truths about Ngambri are located within the Parliamentary Triangle. Places like the National Library hold these stories as reflected in the ethnohistorical records. The High Court must respect the law of the nation and help protect our people and Country.

The trees in the Parliamentary Triangle help tell some of the Ngambri story. The law of the land is reflected in the trees.

The Parliamentary Triangle can be viewed as a revolving door of government process and procedures where people make decisions without looking, listening and learning from our people. ● Dr Aunty Matilda House and Paul Girrawah House’s tree scarring Mulanggari yur-wang (alive and strong), will be permanently featured in the National Gallery Sculpture Garden.

“The roots of the old trees anchor me to Country and Mother Earth.

My mother anchors me to family and Country. My mother is scarred like the land and old people trees.

She stands strong, she is silent, she listens, she speaks, she nurtures, she shares the good nutrients.

She is now healed, she is here now, I am with her, she will transform and go within, back to the old people, I remember, I respect and I love forever.”

PAUL GIRRAWAH HOUSE

This page Paul Girrawah House, Ngambri/ Ngunnawal peoples, work in progress, Kamberri/ Canberra, 2021 © the artist.

Page 8 Dr Matilda House and Paul Girrawah House, Ngambri/ Ngunnawal peoples, with scar tree, Kamberri/Canberra, 2021 © the artists.

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Canberry

By Paul Girrawah House [also Ngambri, Kamberri, Caarnberra, Karnberra, Kemberry, Kgemberry, Ngambra, Nganbri, Ngambra, Gnabra, Canberra]

A mountain of historical evidence overwhelmingly supports the assertion that the name, Canberra, formerly rendered into Roman script as ‘Canburry’ or ‘Canberry’ by the earliest nonAboriginal settlers in Ngambri Country in 1820-21, is derived from the name of the Ngambri people and our Ancestral Country.

JJ Moore’s ‘Canberry Station’, now the site of the National Museum of Australia, the Australian National University and Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, were built on the Ngambri’s main corroboree ground, much of which is now under the waters of Lake Burley-Griffin.

The earliest settlers and travellers referred to the Molonglo River as Ngambra, Ngambra, Nganbri, Kamberri, Kambury, Kemberry, Kembury, Canberry Creek and later the Limestone River. ‘Canberry Station’ was just one small part of the Ngambri’s extensive ancestral lands at the time the colonists first arrived in Ngambri Country in 1821.

The Australian Capital Territory lies firmly within the Ancestral lands of the Ngambri, which also includes some of the surrounding areas. ‘Canberra’ was a corruption of ‘Canberry’, the earlier anglicised version of the original Aboriginal name for this territory: Ngambri. This name for the district, ‘Canberry’, was proclaimed as such in the Government Gazette, 22 January 1834, and was officially known as such from that time even though it was eventually changed to ‘Canberra’, perhaps to make it sound more ‘European’.

When the name of this capital was declared on a windy day in 1913, it was no surprise to the well-established local foreign ‘settlers’ that it was ‘Canberra’. Our ancestral Country became the capital of a colonial political construct in the early 20th century.

Dr Matilda House, Ngambri/ Ngunnawal peoples, with scar tree, Kamberri/Canberra, 2021 © the artist.

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Yuwin-dhu Paul Girrawah House, ngadhu bala marradhal-dhuri, marray-birang gundyigang-gu Ngambri-dhi ngurambang.

Yuwin-dhu (my name) Paul Girrawah House, ngadhu (I) bala (be) marradhal-dhuri (born, has been born), marray-birang (old, very old), gundyigang (house of white people), Ngambri-dhi (Canberra-dhi) ngurambang (Country).

My name is Paul Girrawah House. I was born on Ngambri (Kamberri) Country at the old Kamberri/Canberra Hospital.

Baladhu Ngambri-Walgalu-Pajong-Wallabalooa-Wiradjuri ngurrigiilang gibir.

Baladhu (I am) ngurrigiilang (proud) Ngambri-Walgalu, Pajong, Wallabalooa, Wiradjuri gibir (man) I am a proud Ngambri-Walgalu, Pajong-Wallabalooa, Wiradjuri man.

Madhan ngindi marrungbang ngiyanhigin-gu gudyiin mayiny Madhan (trees) ngindi (want) marrungbang (justice), ngiya-nhigin -gu (ours), gudyiin (ancient time, at the time of our forefathers) mayiny (people).

Trees want justice for our old people.

Madhan yalmambirra ngindu widyunggalung ngurambang-dha Madhan (trees) yalmambirra (teach) ngindu (you) widyunggalung (how) dha (on) ngurambang (Country) Trees teach you how to be on Country.

Madhan yarra bala ngiyang ngama bangal-buwu-rayi Madhan (trees) yarra (speak) bala (be) ngiyang (language) ngama (mother) bangal-buwu-rayi (earth, the Country all over)

Ngadhi ngama-dyi Dr Matilda House-Williams marradhal Erambiedya, Galari-Guwura-la Aboriginal ngurang, Hollywood-la Aboriginal ngurang, Yass-la, Ngambri-dya ngurambang nulabang Wiradjuri, Walgalu, Wallabalooa gudyiin.

Trees speak the language of Mother Earth.

Ngadhi (my) ngama (mother), Dr Matilda House-Williams, marradhal (born) dhirra-gambirra-dha (raise on), Erambie-dya, Galari (Lachlan – Cowra) Aboriginal ngurang (camp/mission), Hollywood Aboriginal ngurang (camp), Yass, Ngambri-dya (Canberra) ngurambang (Country), ngulabang (many) Wiradjuri, Walgalu and Wallaballooa gudyiin’s (ancestries).

Madhan (trees) yarra (speak) ngiyang (language) Biyaami (the great spirit) Mudyigali (spirit of the creators), marramaldhaany (creator, maker), walumarra (protector)

My mother, Dr Matilda House-Williams, was born and raised on Erambie-Cowra Aboriginal mission (camp), Hollywood Aboriginal Reserve (camp) at Yass and Ngambri-Kamberri Country and has multiple Wiradjuri, Walgalu and Wallabalooa ancestries.

Madhan yarra ngiyang Biyaami – Mudyigali, ngiyanhigin gu marramaldhaany walumarra

Trees speak the language of Biami and Mudyigali, our creators and protectors.

Madhan mambuwarra, Wudhagarbinya-bu, gulbarra Madhan (trees) mambuwarra (looking), Wudhagarbinya (listen) Gulbarra (understand) Trees look, listen and understand.

Madhan bala dhirra-ngal-bang Ngambri-Walgalu-Wiradjuri ngurambang mayiny murun murru Madhan bala (trees be), dhirra-ngal-bang (authority), NgambriWalgalu-Wiradjuri ngurambang, mayiny (Ngambri-Walgalu-Wiradjuri Country, people) murun murru (way of life).

Trees are important to Ngambri-Walgalu-Wiradjuri Country, people and way of life.

Madhan bala yalabal Madhan (trees) bala (be) yalabal (generous, always liberal) Trees are generous.

Madhan bala miyagan-bala-yindyamarra walu-marra.

Madhan (trees), bala-miyagan (be relatives), bala-yindyamarra (be respected) walu-marra-bang (protected) Trees are our relatives and must be respected and protected.

Madhan warrugarra wirimbirra gulbalanha Madhan (tree), warrugarra (help), wirimbirra (keep), Gulbalanha (peace) Trees help keep the peace.

Madhan yarra ngiyang budyan-bu mayiny Madhan (trees) yarra (speak) ngiyang (language) budyan-bu, (birds) mayiny (people).

Trees speak the language of the budyaans and people.

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S.J Norman

For his Ceremony work, Bone Library, Koori artist S.J NORMAN collaborated with National Gallery curator AIDAN HARTSHORN’s Walgalu community to engrave a dictionary of taken language onto the bones of “totemic colonial beasts”. It’s power lies both in the objects and in the loss they highlight, writes Hartshorn. Photographs by JAKE TERREY. Spring 2021

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Our languages come from Country, the animals and the plants.

Like the scars left on the trees, middens layered deep beneath the ground and the repeated marks of grinding grooves worn into stone over time; our languages continue to be imbedded within ourselves and in our Country.

For Koori artist S.J Norman, utilising language has also become a powerful tool throughout his art practice by using the power of words as an act of recovery and repossession. Through subtle infiltration and reclamation, S.J reinserts Indigenous voices within colonial spaces that for so long were silenced.

My father, Shane Herrington, a Traditional Custodian of Walgalu Country, once told me that our language came from the magpie, the raspy audial and melisma of its voice reflecting the words spoken by our Ancestors while encompassing the essence of our people; similar to how we communicate, but different enough to be unique. Language holds our lore, our customs and our knowledge, and connection to place. It is the longest living linguistic form of human communication today.

S.J is an intellectual cross-disciplinary, non-binary, transmasculine Koori person of the Wiradjuri Nation.

A formidable artist, performer and writer, S.J has gained great recognition for his art practice and thought-provoking junctures of life as a non-binary First Nations person in present-day Australia. S.J describes his art practice as a “deeply personal and deeply spiritual” experience wherein making work becomes a way of “connecting with people, with communities and with place”.

Walgalu Country reaches from Thelbingung (Mt Kosciuszko region) across to Ngambri Country (Queanbeyan), down to Dumuth (Tumut Valley) and back into the high country at Djilamatang (Tumbarumba). As part of the Ngurmal Nation, the Walgalu are one of many groups from the surrounding regions within Ngurmal and are the cultural custodians of one of the most sacred places for the high country, Buugang (bogong ) Peaks. Buugang Peaks is an area where many ceremonies for neighbouring groups associated with the Walgalu had taken place, none more well-known than the Buugang moth feasting ceremonies. Known for its beautiful landscape, Walgalu Country was noticed by early colonists and renamed the ‘Snowy Valleys’, with many explorers renaming significant Walgalu sites and living spaces which now form the town networks and recreational places within the valley.

Pre-colonial incursion, Walgalu culture thrived. But along with the inquisitive colonists who came to Walgalu country came the rapid deterioration of our culture. Between the smallpox epidemic, land selectors, gold mining and the rapid growth of the agricultural industry in the area, many significant places were destroyed, taking away thousands of years of custom, lore and language. The Walgalu mountains are filled with erasure and continue to be at the mercy of assimilation, as colonial Australia has consciously chosen to favour their history of occupation over Indigenous ownership and management of Country. Yet while much of our cultural existence has been significantly lost, it is slowly being regained.

Traditional language for mob holds generations of understanding and meaning of Country. Since the arrival of the British, their English language has been used against Indigenous people. Colonists used their words to justify the rape, murder and kidnapping of Aboriginal women, children and men, with euphemisms like ‘dispersed’ to disguise their inexcusable actions. For 250 years, many were denied speaking any traditional language, instead it took second – and sometimes third – place in favour of the ‘mother tongue’ of the colony.

Language plays a key role in inserting Indigenous culture and presence within spaces. It can be subtle but also quietly powerful. Specifically, small gestures and cultural shifts within galleries that Indigenise spaces by renaming ‘unknown artist’ to ‘Ancestor’, a powerful act of acknowledgement that is thought-provoking, respectful and sensitive.

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On first meeting S.J, I was excited to meet a successful fellow artist, someone whose practice I had studied at university.

Throughout our discussions of the concept behind his proposed work, his practice and his last iteration of Bone Library, it was evident that for the work produced for this Triennial, Ceremony, S.J’s focus was to represent and explore a local language that had been deemed extinct or forgotten within the Kamberri/Canberra region.

Bone Library is an installation exploring the living aspect of Indigenous languages that had been classified as forgotten, dead or extinct, while pushing back against the notion that Aboriginal people are a ‘dying race’. As a part of a much larger conversation and project called Unsettling Suite, Bone Library critically examines the colonial ethnographic methodologies of collection while liberating Indigenous languages from the constraints of words like ‘extinct’ that impose connotations that they have become ‘artefact’, raising the question: what is the relationship between artefact and living culture?

As a Walgalu man, whose Country is part of the Gnurmal Nation and situated within the region of what is now known as the Australian Capital Territory, I proposed that S.J utilise the Walgalu language as the centre for his next incarnation of Bone Library for Ceremony.

Like many other Indigenous languages across Australia, the Walgalu language over time was taken and rendered extinct.

The remnants of language are inconsistent as a result of colonisation, with only small fragments and pockets of dialect to refer to in colonial archival texts. Through consultation with my father, a fragmented list of words recorded by ‘explorers’ was passed onto me, which formed the cultural vernacular of the latest iteration of Bone Library.

The Bone Library performance occurs within a darkened room set up as if it were a theatrical stage where audiences enter for the experience. Staged as a dark clinical space, its aesthetic is attributed to that of a ‘morgue library’ reminiscent of museum collections lined with illuminated tables and bones. Elusive and forensic in nature, S.J sits silently at one end of the room behind clear plastic sheeting, working to the sound of grinding bone and scouring tools.

Surrounding the artist are the bleached skeletal remains of deceased animals, the collected bones of livestock.

“My work as an artist is an expression of a very personal practice of reconnecting through my body and through embodied practice with ceremonial technologies, spiritual technologies...

It’s also a process which is about me and my personal connection to my culture, to my whole mob, to my communities, to land, to time, and to knowledge. That is, that finds an expression in my art practice. My artistic practice exists within and draws upon multiple lineages of ceremony.”

S.J NORMAN

Above Bones collected from Walgalu Country in S.J Norman’s studio, Gadigal Country/Sydney.

Left Walgalu Traditional Custodian Shane Herrington on Country, Dumuth/Tumut Valley, NSW, 2021. Photograph: National Gallery of Australia.

Page 14 S.J Norman, Wiradjuri people, in his studio in Gadigal Country/Sydney, with bones collected from Walgalu Country, 2021.

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S.J Norman, Wiradjuri people, in his studio in Gadigal Country/Sydney, with bones collected from Walgalu Country, 2021.

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As with previous iterations of Bone Library, the bones of cattle and sheep – animal detritus of the Australian pastoral industry – have been collected from farmland, on this occasion in Walgalu Country, a landscape imbedded within the history of Indigenous custodianship and the conflict of colonial occupation. As with most instances of farming properties, the local mob of that area had been pushed out of these places in favour of sheep and cattle stations and other pastoral crops; the bones representing the residue of Indigenous displacement.

Over the duration of the exhibition, S.J inscribes cursive text onto each bone, every object “inscribed with a single word of language”, marking the colonial relics with the indelible print of Indigenous words. The inscriptions challenge the falsities of Western history, that state our languages are extinct. The act of inscribing animates the work, demonstrating to audiences that our languages are not forgotten or extinct but were forcibly made dormant. As S.J moves his hand across the bones, the act of permanently scarring the remains reignites and welcomes language back into Country through Indigenous authority.

It is an act of ceremony.

Once the words are placed onto the bones, the objects are ritually moved to a sorting table in the centre of the room creating a catalogued bone dictionary of ‘forgotten’ language.

With the bones spread out, audiences are met with the stark evidence of a linguistic history that pre-dates the arrival of the English by millennia. The engraved bones provide an educational role and enable audience engagement with the unfamiliar by showing how these languages were withheld from non-Indigenous Australians as well as Australia’s First People; audiences should question what these bones and their inscriptions signify, what they have replaced, and what other languages have been lost.

At the end of the inscription, audience members are given the opportunity to become a temporary trustee or custodian of a single bone and inscribed ‘extinct’ word. They are entrusted to hold on to it and care for the bone until the complete collection is recalled by the artist at any given point.

“In doing so, the audience become members of an international network of Bone Librarians, responsible for the shared trusteeship of a floating collection ,” says S.J. Through this shared experience, through the act of a generous gesture, Bone Library decentralises the “idea of collecting cultural knowledge and looking at what it means to disperse and hold knowledge collectively”.

Throughout S.J’s practice, and specifically with Bone Library, he questions what we as a nation choose to remember, what we choose to acknowledge and what we choose to do with that information once it is understood. Bone Library provides audiences with a space to be confronted with the intergenerational trauma of the First Peoples of Australia.

Providing both an active and contemplative space for audiences to engage in, Bone Library continues to reignite the resting languages of the First Nations People of Australia.

— Aidan Hartshorn (Walgalu/Wiradjuri peoples) is the Wesfarmers Assistant Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

S.J NORMAN “I was born in Sydney, Wangal Country. My dad is English and my mother is a Wiradjuri woman, but she was also born in Redfern, Wangal Country, as were most of my uncles and my Elders, and the seat of our family is Nyngan, far west in New South Wales where the red dirt starts.

“I grew up moving around a lot – that’s how I learnt to be in the world. I first got out of Australia at 21 and moved to Japan, training with a dance company. I’ve spent time in different parts of the British Isles, particularly near where my dad is from, and was based in Berlin for the better part of 11 years. Now I am based between Gadigal Country/Sydney and the continent known to many native people as Turtle Island, also known as the United States. I work pretty extensively there and have ongoing collaborative relationships with Indigenous people there.

“My art making is one manifestation, or one expression, of my spiritual being and my spiritual practice. And that’s a very personal journey. And I hope at least through doing things in public and inviting other people into direct collaboration … that some of that journey can be shared and that it might help other people on their path.

“Unsettling Suite was a suite of works that looked at the embodied legacy of colonial trauma, the ongoing legacy of colonial violence as it’s experienced in the body.

I first started working on Bone Library back in 2007, butit didn’t see its first public iteration until 2010. I was doing a lot of research at the time into the presence of our bones in colonial museological archives in the stacks of colonial museums, and the really horrific history of theft of our remains [and repatriation from British museums].

I was also thinking a lot about language and if we think about language as the bones of a culture, we think about language as the underlying architecture of the body that is the culture. So, I started working on Bone Library with those ideas in mind. It is a long durational performance work, but it’s also a cumulative sculpture installation.

It involves a repetitive engraving process, so I learnt the craft of engraving and bone carving. And I start out with an empty room with a lot of specimen tables ... it’s a space which is designed to evoke a multilayered potential interpretation of either a forensic process or a taxonomical process.

“I begin with a room of six to eight empty tables and about 1,500 to 2,000 prepared animal bones. They’re the bones of sheep and beef cattle, specifically the bones of these kind of totemic beasts of Australian colonial pastoralism. The rearing of sheep and beef cattle is a practice which is historically, and also now, very connected to the disposition of our mob from our land, particularly Wiradjuri people. It’s something which continues to impact Country. I am reclaiming the bones of these animals and using them as the basis of this work, where every one of those bones is inscribed with a single word from a language, usually the language of the Country where the work takes place, which is something which has been done in consultation with local mob.

“Every bone is inscribed with a single word from that language and then catalogued and displayed. At the end of that process, the bones are handed over in the presence of, and with the blessing of, Elders and community, into the public trusteeship of audience members.

“The idea is that we are decentralising this idea of collecting cultural knowledge and looking at what it means to disperse and hold knowledge collectively.”

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Studio Spotlight We visit an artist in their studio and discover how space influences their inspiration and creative process.

This month: PENNY EVANS, Kamilaroi/Gomeroi people

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I live in Lismore, Bundjalung country, northern New South Wales. I’m a descendant of the Kamilaroi/Gomeroi people of northwest NSW – my pop’s country where my Ancestors were born.

I have always been an artist. I knew it from when I was a child. I love working with clay, it connects me to the ground, to Country. It’s healing. Our Ancestors used to make clay totemic effigies leading up to ceremony, and I love the thought that I could follow in that tradition somehow intuitively.

My home studio is my sanctuary. It was purpose-built as an extension from the existing old 1890s shoebox-sized shed that I’ve worked in for 20 years. Luckily, we finished the extension just as COVID-19 lockdowns started last year.

My main stipulations were to have more space and light, which meant plenty of windows out into the garden. When we bought this place it was a suburban block covered in lawn with no trees. We got busy planting as soon as we got the keys and created the whole garden.

I love paperbarks, they are very spiritual beings, and I have three different species that I can see from the studio. They attract multitudes of birds and insects when they flower. They complement and accent the studio and the house. I am currently in the process of planting all

natives and reducing the amount of exotics. Gardening is definitely a part of my process and is good to do when I need a break from making.

in different stages of breaking down and I was completely overwhelmed by the sheer diversity of what I was seeing.

I felt like they were talking to me.

For the work I’m creating for Ceremony I’m working very loosely with the clay, letting it speak, playing with mark making and textures. I’ve chosen red terracotta clay as the main body for the work as it has a high iron oxide content, which relates to red ochre, which our people use for ceremonial purposes.

Banksia are anthropomorphic – there is a real human quality to them, they’re very beguiling. It was like they were calling me, whispering to me, wanting their photos taken. I obliged.

The work is called BURN or Gudhuwali (Gamilaraay). It’s a re-creation of a fire ground seen in Yaegl Country where I visit regularly, in the Yuraygir National Park (on the NSW north coast).

I happened upon that Country about seven years ago. I needed somewhere to go and have a break and I went to this place I’d never been to before and there had just been a massive fire through sections of that Country. The energy was very intense. It was a fire that was too hot and destructive in some areas, yet other sections were less burnt or untouched.

I’ve spent a lot of time there over the past few years and have witnessed the regrowth and changes in the various adjoining ecologies. My powers of observation increased during this time.

There were so many banksia in the different areas that I walked through

When I recreate them in clay, I use a pooling glaze so the pieces are predominantly matt black and then some of the mouths and crevices have a deep orange pooling glaze in them.

This represents wii (Gamilaraay) burning fire but also speaks to DNA, our blood.

My studio has the same colours. I painted the exterior of my studio black with red doors, our colours.

Ceremony to me is about ritual. It’s about transformation. It’s about growing up.

It’s about respect and responsibility.

I’m so thrilled to be in this exhibition and the fact that it is themed Ceremony.

We all need to be practising ceremony and rituals in one form or other, getting back to ourselves and to who we are as people and how we connect to Country. It’s so important for us to survive as a human race. Connecting to Country is the most important thing. I’m so grateful that I know where I connect to, it’s profound.

Right Penny Evans’s studio in Lismore, NSW, 2021, image courtesy and © the artist.

Opposite (above) Penny Evans, Kamilaroi/Gomeroi people, BURN Gudhuwa-li (detail), 2021, image courtesy and © the artist; (below) Penny Evans, Kamilaroi/Gomeroi people, in her studio in Lismore, NSW, 2021, image courtesy and © the artist.

Photograph: Madeleine Smith.

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Mind Your Language

In 2019, the world observed the United Nations’ International Year of Indigenous Languages, which shone a light on the alarming rate of Indigenous language loss over the past century and celebrated the work across many communities and societies to save, protect, strengthen and revive thousands of Indigenous languages. This observance was of such critical importance that 2022-2032 has now been declared the Decade of Indigenous Languages, with a number of strategic actions planned around the globe to strengthen the position of Indigenous languages and empower those who speak them.

Building on the lessons learnt during 2019, the Declaration recognises “the importance of Indigenous languages to social cohesion and inclusion, cultural rights, health and justice, and highlights their relevance to sustainable development and the preservation of biodiversity as they maintain ancient and traditional knowledge that binds humanity with nature”.

With the Decade of Indigenous Languages beginning in 2022, the Gallery will contribute to this vital global conversation by embracing First Nations culture beyond works of art, writes BRUCE JOHNSON-MCLEAN, Wierdi/ Birri-Gubba peoples, Barbara Jean Humphreys Assistant Director, Indigenous Engagement.

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The National Gallery has long been a place of great cultural significance for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art but, increasingly, we must also be a place that values First Nations culture more holistically. During the Decade of Indigenous Languages the Gallery will make a concerted effort to embrace, promote and empower Indigenous languages and their speakers. Locally, we will work with members of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri communities – who both have connection to Country within which the Gallery exists – to identify a range of opportunities for renaming our programs and spaces, acknowledging our place within their Country.

As a national institution, the National Gallery will also work

with Indigenous language speakers and knowledge holders across the nation to ensure that their languages are respected, valued, embraced and celebrated within our spaces as an integral part of our core business.

In recent years, Indigenous languages have featured ever more prominently throughout the Gallery’s exhibition program.

The display Belonging: Stories of Australian Art began with Berceuse, a video installation by Christian Thompson featuring a haunting lullaby sung in his Bidjara language. Christian's introduction to a space grappling with the weight of Australian national myths and narratives played out through art history is a powerful statement given his Bidjara language has only recently been brought back from the cusp of extinction through community action and reclaimative practices. Indeed, Bidjara, like many Indigenous languages, was violently removed from the mouths of its speakers through government policies directed at monolingualism and monoculturalism. Today, we don’t have to travel very far to hear a diverse range of languages spoken within any major Australian town or city. It is within this newly found and necessary embrace of multiculturalism and multilingualism that Indigenous languages are being valued and spoken once more.

Established in 2007, the flagship exhibition series National Indigenous Art Triennial was the first large-scale curated exhibition series dedicated to contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and artists. Today it remains the only non-prize exhibition series of its kind at a major gallery in Australia.

Next year's fourth edition of the Triennial, Ceremony, profiles many artists working with the languages of their homeland, bringing the language of their families, communities and Country to national and international audiences. Language has always been embedded in the conceptual and cultural frameworks of much First Nations art, but in recent years language itself, through text, spoken word or explicit conceptual framing, has become an increasingly important current within contemporary First Nations art practice.

Robert Andrew is a Brisbane-based contemporary artist with familial connections to Yawuru Country, around Rubibi (Broome) in Western Australia. Something of a self-taught robotic engineer and conceptual artist rolled into one, Robert creates and programs machines that perform his art in an exhibition space. His spray machines shoot jets of water that etch a surface painted white with ochre underneath. As the mechanical performance unfolds, letters appear and words are revealed.

Often the word ‘Nganga’, the Yawuru word for language itself, emerges in rich red ochre from his Country, symbolising the inseparability of language and Country for First Nations people.

S.J Norman, a diasporic Koori artist of Wiradjuri descent, also uses Indigenous languages in his conceptual, crossdisciplinary work. S.J's Bone Library sees the artist at work in the exhibition space engraving an ‘extinct’ Indigenous language onto the bones of introduced cattle and sheep. Bone Library makes the connection between settler-colonial pastoralism, displacement of First Nations from their land and the loss of Indigenous language through this process.

Opposite Gutiŋarra Yunupiŋu, Dhuwala people, Garrutu’mi Mala (My Connections) (still), 2019, image courtesy the artist and The Mulka Project and © the artist.

Right James Tylor, Kaurna people, The Darkness of Enlightenment (Yartakurlangga), 2021, Becquerel daguerreotype, image courtesy and © the artist.

Page 24 Robert Andrew, Yawuru people, A Connective Reveal – Language, 2019, installation view, The National 2019, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, 2019, image courtesy and © the artist.

Photograph: Diana Panuccio.

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For Ceremony, S.J has worked with members of the Walgalu community, from the Brungle and Tumut area west of the Brindabella Range, to inscribe Walgalu language onto cattle bones from the same Country. The act of connecting the project with local community allows viewers to understand that these issues have impacted and continue to affect Aboriginal people locally and allows local or regional Indigenous language to infiltrate the institution.

Kaurna artist James Tylor recently spent six months working with the National Gallery to develop a Glossary of terms looking at the dual use of traditional Aboriginal language with place names and redefining colonial terms. This Glossary has been applied to several exhibitions and catalogues.

For Ceremony, James has produced a new series of daguerreotypes entitled The Darkness of Enlightenment, in which he uses the historical photographic technique to present images of Kaurna Country with little to no supporting material or documentation. Here, James speaks to the erasure of Kaurna language through acts of intentional ignorance, where images of Kaurna Country and Kaurna objects were collected without accompanying Kaurna knowledge to give proper contextual understanding of them. In instances where details were documented, this was invariably done in English, with a very rudimentary understanding of Kaurna language or First Nations worldviews, and they therefore hold many

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misunderstandings. James highlights the lack of accurate documentation in the historical records which are at once holes in his cultural inheritance and in the national understanding of Kaurna language, knowledge and worldview.

Gutiŋarra Yunupiŋu’s work brings an even lesser-known element of Indigenous language to light through his use of Yolngu matha sign language. Throughout the continent, sign languages were an integral part of communication between Aboriginal people. With hundreds of languages and thousands of smaller dialects coexisting within Australia, regional sign languages were crucial tools for communication in trade and at ceremonial gatherings, and in situations where speech is forbidden or unnecessary. Today, non-verbal communication remains an important element of Indigenous conversation, even where formal understanding of Indigenous sign languages has been eroded or erased. In Yolŋu communities in northeastern Arnhem Land, Yolŋu Sign Language (YSL) has remained relatively strong (although is recognised as an endangered language) and is a vital means of connection for Deaf Yolŋu to participate in Yolŋu society and ceremony. For a young, profoundly Deaf artist like Gutiŋarra, YSL has also become an artistic tool through which he communicates to the world. → Continued on page 75

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Gutiŋarra Yunupiŋu 26

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Artist GUTIŊARRA YUNUPIŊU (Guti) was born Deaf and uses Yolŋu Sign Language (YSL). In his video Gutiŋarra Djalkiri, Guti visits his homeland, Buymarr in East Arnhem Land, and discusses with his family and teachers how his connection to Country helped him learn to communicate. This is an edited transcript of translations from the video.

Hello, I am Gutiŋarra. Welcome to my home by the sea and the rock mountain where the flag flies. My land, Buymarr.

GUTI

This is my homeland. I am a land owner for this homeland, Buymarr. My brother is already gone now, and all my sisters are gone now. I am the only land owner left now for this homeland. I live and look after this homeland.

I am Guti’s grandmother.

MITJAŊBA DJERRKURA

My name is Nyaluŋ Maymuru and Buymarr is my mothers’ homeland. I am Guti’s second mother, I am also the eldest mother for Gutiŋarra. We helped Guti with sign language. We taught him Yolŋu Sign Language, and also he has been learning sign language in Auslan. He used actions and sign language from us when he was a little boy.

NYALUŊ MAYMURU

I could not read or write. I did not know any sign language. But going to Buymarr, my homeland, sitting with my teachers when I was three, I learned by talking with my grandmother and mother, with my uncle and brother, with my niece and grandfather with my father and mother … Sitting with my family, they were my teachers, they helped me learn.

Learning and talking, me with my grandmother. I’m thankful.

GUTI

[while weaving] Here at Buymarr ... I taught myself [how to weave]. I watched my elders, all my mothers, all my sisters, my other two Warramiri clan sisters – they knew how to make mats. I learnt to make these by watching them back there at Yirrkala [the community in Arnhem Land where Guti primarily lives]. I am making this here at Buymarr and Guti is watching me.

MITJAŊBA DJERRKURA

First Guti was living here [at Buymarr], and then he got into school [at Yirrkala]. He also got initiated here at Buymarr …

NYALUŊ MAYMURU

[showing the beach at Buymarr] They were only kids that time, this is where they all grew up and we all participated at their initiations. They are from this place, Guti here … that’s his name, this is where he grew up, when he was little, and all these foods we ate – fish, stingray – and all the bush food, all the seafood – oysters, fish – all the food that we ate here at Buymarr; then he went back to Yirrkala for school.

MITJAŊBA DJERRKURA

When [Guti] he started school, he bought all his knowledge about Yolŋu sign to school with him and how to communicate with his friends and family. The key change was when the teachers learnt how to work with Guti and how to communicate where everyone started to understand his potential.

KATRINA HUDSON (YIRRKALA SCHOOL CO-PRINCIPAL)

Artist Gutiŋarra Yunupiŋu, Dhuwala people, during a visit to his homeland, Buymarr in East Arnhem Land. Image from Gutiŋarra Djalkiri (still), 2018, image courtesy and © The Mulka Project.

VANESSA LAMBOA (TEACHER) Gutiŋarra

Yunupiŋu is very hard-working. One very important factor that I found is …

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“Yolŋu culture inspires my film work. A lot of my personal films are self-portrait works but I’m also passionate about filming Yolŋu ceremony for my community. I am very proud to be included in this year’s Triennial: Ceremony.

Yolŋu ceremonies have always been and will always be the backbone of my life.”

GUTIŊARRA YUNUPIŊU

Above Gutiŋarra Yunupiŋu, Dhuwala people, speaking in Yolŋu Sign Language with his family during a visit to his homeland, Buymarr.

Image from Gutiŋarra Djalkiri (still), 2018, image courtesy and © The Mulka Project.

Right Gutiŋarra Yunupiŋu, Dhuwala people, walking through his hometown of Yirrkala in Northeast Arnhem Land, image courtesy and © The Mulka Project. Photograph: Joseph Brady.

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seeing how he was very comfortable communicating in Auslan sign language because he already had a Yolŋu Sign Language that he grew up with ... that made it very easy for him to communicate and blended Auslan sign language in and he knew everything that he was doing by communicating with peers, students, family, friends and the community.

KATRINA HUDSON Guti

graduated from year 12 with his Northern Territory Certificate of Education [and Training] and his certificate II in Conservation and Land Management.

The participation of the community and his family in his graduation was very, very special.

I grew up, finished school and graduated. I work here at Mulka [Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, the communitycontrolled arts centre in Yirrkala]. I go to work every day, which helps me and my life. My boss here is good, he teaches me new skills. Working at Mulka, I’m learning and improving, my work is getting easier and I know my filmmaking work really well.

GUTI

ISHMAEL MARIKA (MULKA PROJECT CREATIVE DIRECTOR) Guti

is great.

He comes to work every day, he works all day and does editing work all by himself. To communicate with Guti we use Yolŋu Sign Language. Sometime because Guti learnt sign language in Auslan and also in Yolŋu. When he edits films with sound it’s hard because Gutiŋarra is Deaf, he can’t hear any sounds, he only sees in that video the wave forms and the video tells him what sounds. Like if there is a sound of traditional song playing and sound of clapsticks, he sees that and he knows where that traditional song will stop.

Maralitja My name is Gutiŋarra My moiety is Yirritja I am of the Gumatj clan Our totem is the bäru (crocodile) My surname is Yunupiŋu, which is the name of a rock in the sea.

Maralitja, Ŋunbuŋu, Dhukulul, Bärrupa, Dhar’yuna is my formal ‘identity’.

Maralitja is an ancestral being of wisdom and is a powerful leader.

Maralitja identifies the Gumatj clan as the people of Birany Birany, the land of the gurtha (fire). When a person passes away, Gumatj men and women paint themselves with yellow ochre and white clay on their foreheads. This represents our spirit being of Maralitja.

In my artwork my face is painted with yellow ochre. I am the ancestral being Maralitja. As Maralitja, I am performing the buŋgul (dance) of bäru. Bäru comes from the saltwater, I come from the saltwater.

When I was in year 12 I liked to learn. When I finished and graduated, receiving my certificate, I worked and I worked and worked and worked and now my work is good.

GUTI

KATRINA HUDSON He’s

really a role model for all other young people in this community. Guti is an example that it doesn’t matter if you have a disability, it doesn’t matter if you have other problems in your life, if you’re focused and committed and you’ve got family support then you can achieve anything.

I am Gutiŋarra. My mother and my grandmother, my brothers and sisters, my wife and my whole family welcome you to our homeland. Thank you.

GUTI

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Mantua Nangala, Pintupi people, Untitled, 2021, image courtesy Papunya Tula Artists © the artist.

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Mantua Nangala The paintings of Papunya Tula artist MANTUA NANGALA, Pintupi people, relate to the epic travels of the ‘Kanaputa Women’ who travelled from the west, passing through celebrated women’s sites.

Here, Mantua talks with HETTI PERKINS about the renowned Western Desert art movement and her major new triptych for Ceremony.

Fifty years ago in Papunya, a government outpost established 240 kilometres northwest of Mparntwe/Alice Springs to facilitate the assimilation of desert peoples in the region, a group of men gathered to put their cultural inheritance ‘on the record’ in drawings and paintings. In response to the governmentsponsored strategy to erase their cultural identity, the artists literally drew their knowledge of traditional body and sand painting associated with ceremony. The early ‘boards’ captured a raw power that continues to reverberate through the works of the descendants of the founding artists. From inauspicious beginnings, the desert artists have changed the cultural landscape of Australia, bringing a new way of seeing and signifying Country to national and international audiences.

The spark of the cultural burn lit in Papunya in 1971 spread throughout the desert over subsequent decades and became known as Western Desert art. At the vanguard of this extraordinary Australian movement is Papunya Tula Artists (PTA), established in Papunya the following year when the ‘painting mob’ formally incorporated as a company comprising an Aboriginal board, shareholders and artist members that continues today. With 50 shareholders, the company now represents more than 80 artists. PTA has a gallery space in Mparntwe/Alice Springs and studio facilities in Walungurru and Kiwirrkura, 530 and 700 kilometres west of Mparntwe, respectively. The company has supported major infrastructure including the Kintore swimming pool and the Purple House remote dialysis service, as well as funding ceremonies, funerals, music projects, festivals and an aged care service.

A first step in the outstation movement, the journey home for families was largely funded by the sale of artworks and the empowerment that came from activating their ceremonial connections to their Country. Yayayi was an outstation community 42 kilometres west of Papunya, set up in the early 1970s by Luritja/Pintupi families in the direction of their homelands – some as far away as the Gibson Desert in Western Australia. A collection of the works created at Yayayi was

acquired by the newly established Aboriginal Arts Board of the Australia Council and the community was the subject of academic research undertaken by Fred Myers and documentary footage shot by Ian Dunlop for Film Australia. During the following decade, Pintupi communities were established at Walungurru (Kintore) in 1981 and then Kiwirrkura in 1983.

The National Gallery commemorates the juxtaposition of the two milestone anniversaries of the advent of the Western Desert art movement and the founding of PTA with the commissioning of a major new work by Mantua Nangala for the 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony. Nangala’s triptych Untitled spans seven metres and is a first for PTA in its monumental scale. In this work Nangala paints Marrapinti, a site close to her birthplace in her father’s Country at Tjulyurunya (close to Kiwirrkura and Pollock Hills), Western Australia.

Mantua created her first painting for PTA in early 1998, about 18 months after the original group of Kiwirrkura women artists began painting. Mantua’s Country lies west of Kiwirrkura and deep into the Gibson Desert where rows of parallel sand dunes (tali) dominate the landscape. Along with those of many of her fellow artists, her paintings relate to the epic travels of the Kanaputa Women who travelled from the west, passing through the celebrated women’s sites of Mukula, Marrapinti and Yunala.

Nangala is among the senior artist members of the art centre today and is also a member of an illustrious artistic family.

Her father was Anatjari Tjampitjinpa who, along with his family, was brought out of the desert into Papunya by the Northern Territory Welfare Branch patrols in 1964. The patrol’s meeting with Tjampitjinpa the previous year was the subject of Douglas Lockwood’s 1964 book, The lizard eaters. Tjampitjinpa began consistently painting for PTA at Yayayi outstation and was one of the movement’s most influential artists from the mid-1970s.

Nangala’s sister, Yinarupa Nangala, and both of her brothers, Ray James Tjangala and George Yapa Tjangala, are leading artists, as was Nangala’s late husband, Yumpululu Tjungurrayi.

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HETTI PERKINS (HP) Where were you

born, and how long have

you lived at Kiwirrkura?

I was born at Tjulyurru, Western Australia.

I have lived in Kiwirrkura since the 1980s. I started working in Kiwirrkura as a health worker at the clinic, so we moved here during the days of Charlie McMahon [a former outstation coordinator who built essential services in the Western Desert before going on to form the band Gondwanaland and play didgeridoo with Midnight Oil].

MANTUA NANGALA (MN)

When did you first become aware of painting for PTA? Has your family been involved in it for a long time?

HP

MN My

father [Anatjari Tjampitjinpa] had been painting in Papunya and Yayayi in the early days. That was when I first saw those canvas men; all the old people were painting for Papunya Tula.

Did someone in your family teach you about painting or inspire you?

HP

MN I

watched my father and my husband [Yumpululu Tjungurrayi] painting and learnt about canvas and paint, and then decided that I wanted to make canvas as well.

MN I want

them to feel palya, good inside and in their head, thinking about these paintings.

What message do your paintings have for all Australians, especially as they will be shown in Kamberri/Canberra?

HP

MN I

think it’s important that a lot of people will be able to see these paintings; it’s good to share my culture with everybody. It makes me happy that people can see my story and my tjukurrpa.

Is art an important part of your life in a remote area community? How important is PTA to you and the community in your life in Australia today?

HP

MN It

is very important for us artists all over the Western Desert; it helps us get some money for our families. We have helped raise money for dialysis with Purple House and lots of other things for the community. We help people every way with Papunya Tula.

— Hetti Perkins is the Senior Curator-at-Large.

— Special thanks to Paul Sweeney and Fred Myers for their assistance and to Brendan King for conducting the interview with Mantua Nangala in Kiwirrkura on the author’s behalf.

When did you do your first painting? Did you assist another artist?

HP

MN I just started myself after watching all the old people painting,

started off with little ones first and then made some bigger ones.

I first painted for Papunya Tula in 1998, I think, but had made a few canvasses in Mparntwe/Alice Springs before that. I was just making them for a little bit of money for tucker. I used to help my husband a little bit when he was working on large canvasses.

HP

What do you paint, and why do you paint the way that you do?

MN The

story that I paint is Marrapinti. It is a sacred women’s place that is my ngurra [Country] – it is a very important place for my people.

HP

Do you prefer certain colours, and why?

MN I

like to have colours that are close but are a little bit different, usually five colours and all creamy whites. When you look at the canvas you can see movement; I like the way it changes over the canvas.

Your paintings are very beautiful and obviously take a long time to create. What is it that allows you to spend so much time and energy creating your paintings? Are you thinking about tjukurrpa, songs, Country, etc?

HP

MN I

like to make my paintings slowly, every dot slowly and carefully. When I paint I’m thinking about my Country and my family. It is very relaxing for me and makes me feel good, palya.

Do you feel like you are in a different ‘place’ when you are painting?

HP

MN When

I’m painting, I’m at home on my ngurra in my head, thinking about Marrapinti stories and songs, Minyma Tjuta (all the woman) it makes me feel good, palya.

What would you like people to think or feel when they look at your paintings?

HP

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Opposite (above) Mantua Nangala, Pintupi people, at the Yayayi outstation in the Northern Territory in 1974. Photograph: courtesy and © Ian Dunlop; (below) Portrait of Mantua Nangala, 2017, image courtesy and © Papunya Tula Artists.

Photograph: Matt Frost.

“I like to make my paintings slowly, every dot slowly and carefully. When I paint I’m thinking about my Country and my family, it is very relaxing for me and makes me feel good, palya.”

MANTUA NANGALA

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Blak power

A group of artists from the Yarrenyty Arltere and Tangentyere art centres in the Northern Territory is collaborating to create the soft sculpture Blak Parliament House, an Aboriginal take on Australia’s political heartland. Here, artists MARLENE RUBUNTJA and NANETTE SHARPE explain their connection to their work and Mparntwe/Alice Springs.

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Yarrenyty Arltere artists – (from left to right) Dulcie Sharpe, Patricia Nelson, Marlene Rubuntja, Rhonda Sharpe, Trudy Inkamala – with work in progress, Mparntwe/ Alice Springs, 2021, image courtesy and © Yarrenyty Arltere Artists.

Marlene Rubuntja (Western Arrarnta people)

Nanette Sharpe (Western Arrarnta people)

My name is Marlene Rubuntja. Marlene is my whitefella’s name. But my father called me Lalali, ‘little one’.

My Name is Nanette Sharpe. I am 27 years old. I work in the Yarrenyty Arltere art room with my family and my grandmother Trudy Inkamala.

I come to work every day to sew my soft sculptures. I love this Yarrenyty Arltere Town Camp with all my heart and I love this art centre the same. We can come here to make some money and to settle down. We can’t just walk around in town begging for money. When I work, I can fill up my cupboards with food, I can buy pretty clothes and feel really good helping out my grandkids.

I love it when my grandkids come to the art room. My head might feel a bit stressed out if they run around, but if they watch me and all the other artists and sit next to me doing some art, I feel really happy. It’s really good when they can see how strong all these artists are. They have a future to look forward to by looking at us now. That is the same as what my father – artist, activist and historian Wenten Rubuntja AM – thought when he set up these town camps . He thought about the future and the people sitting down with nowhere to live. Getting water on our own Country out of [the late botanical illustrator and activist] Olive Pink’s tap. All the Luritja people living through the Gap [Ntaripe (Heavitree)]. All the Arrernte people living this side and the Warlpiri on the other side. All mixed up. He really cared about the people. He only got a little tin shed on his own Country. That’s all.

Like Old Laddie taught Trudy all about the bush, well, Trudy did the same for me; she taught me everything.

Now you can see I’m a strong woman and proud. I like working.

It makes me happy working, learning new things. I like waking up in the morning and knowing I have work to go to. Otherwise, I think hard thoughts.

I love walking to the art centre in the morning and making tea.

I love sewing now because Trudy keeps encouraging me and Dulcie [Sharpe, Nanette’s great aunt] and it’s fun in the art room.

Now that I am an artist it has given me the confidence to do other jobs, too. I work also with little kids and after-school programs. To have this art room to come to every day has really helped me be so strong and Trudy did that too. I’m lucky Trudy brought me up, my grandmother.

I made this dancing girl for the Blak Parliament House because I think that is me, dancing, and it means something to me.

This Parliament House is for everyone. White, Aboriginal and any other colour. It belongs to the community. It does not just belong to those white men me and Milton always see talking on TV. People like my father and other old strong people weren’t scared to talk. They talked for their people, for their Country. They talked because they really wanted things to be better for their people. Not just words, but feelings, too. I think I’m following in my father’s footsteps and my brother, Mervyn, too. We [are] not ashamed to talk, not scared of those people in that Parliament House in Kamberri/Canberra. They better listen because we really have something to say: Really good, kind and strong for everyone and for Country.

The Yarrenyty Arltere and Tangentyere artists collaboration includes:

Yarrenyty Arltere Marlene Rubuntja, Western Arrarnta people, Trudy Inkamala, Western Arrarnta/Luritja peoples, Dulcie Sharpe, Luritja/Arrernte peoples, Rhonda Sharpe, Luritja people, Roxanne Petrick, Alyawarre people, Nanette Sharpe Western Arrarnta people, Sheree Inkamala, Luritja/Pitjantjara/Western Arrarnta peoples, Rosabella Ryder, Arrernte people, Louise Robertson, Walpiri people, Cornelius Ebatarinja, Western Arrarnta/Arrernte peoples.

Tangentyere Betty Conway, Pitjantjatjara people, Nyinta Donald, Pitjantjatjara people, Sally M. Mulda, Pitjantjatjara/ Luritja people, Majorie Williams, Western Arrarnta people, Lizzie Jako, Pitjantjatjara people, Grace Robinya, Western Arrarnta people.

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Gunditjmara artist HAYLEY MILLAR BAKER uses images to interrogate the way memories are made through acts of remembering and misremembering.

Here she documents a day in her life in Naarm/Melbourne.

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All images courtesy and © the artist.

One fine day

Toast for brekkie with the kids.

My husband, Ryan, is on nightshift at the moment, so it’s just me, Maeve and Quinn for breakfast.

All images courtesy and © the artist.

7AM

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While I get ready, the kids play. Quinn has just learnt how to crawl and is enjoying adventuring throughout the house.

8AM

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Arriving at Fancy Films. I first met Keryn [Nossal, the founder, owner and managing director of Fancy Films] back in 2018 when I was working with Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) and the Melbourne Indigenous Transition School (MITS). I was leading a term-long workshop and Fancy Films was shooting a documentary on the process.

10AM

In the edit suite at Fancy Films. So many choices, variations, ways to cut each scene. Only time will tell how the film comes together! The editing processes are much the same as the way I construct my collages – building a strong narrative is the priority and that’s achieved through fitting the visual puzzle pieces together in a certain way that best supports the storyline.

11AM

Stopover to visit Nan and drop off some books. I recently bought two books on the history of the Djab Wurrung people and land by Ian D. Clark and Nan is borrowing them. Her family tree is in the book along with letters and newspaper articles about them. Nan collects all family-related documents and one day I will inherit it all to keep building on and eventually pass on to my grandchildren.

2PM

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Back home and into my office to re-watch an hour’s worth of selects from Nyctinasty to make sure I haven’t missed any gold shots that need to be included in the final cut. I’ll be re-watching the selects on repeat over the next few days before I go back into the edit suite.

4PM

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The workday is now finished and while I hang out with Maeve in her room I take a photo of her, and she takes a photo of me on her Frozen slideshow camera. Maeve says she is an artist too because she makes pictures like me.

5PM

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Joel Bray, Wiradjuri people, Biladurang, 2017, performance, Naarm/ Melbourne Fringe, image courtesy and © the artist.

Photograph: Pippa Samaya.

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Joel Bray Joel Bray’s practice, which focuses on performance and dance, springs from the intersection of his Wiradjuri cultural heritage and his queer identity, writes PETER JOHNSON, Curator, Projects.

What does it mean for a body to be both queer and First Nations? How do these identities and legacies shape the way we take up and move through space? What new forms are possible that embrace resistance and contradiction?

Wiradjuri dancer and choreographer Joel Bray explores the complex intersection of identity and culture. Through performances rich with humour and vulnerability, he draws us in, asking uncomfortable questions and creating space for unexpected answers.

Both Indigenous bodies and queer bodies are contingent – shaped by their relationships with institutions of power and the threat of violence. They are moulded in ways that demand compliance or risk annihilation.

Bray rejects this, instead embodying new forms rooted in cultural traditions, asserting his bodily sovereignty and, by extension, the sovereignty of the communities to which he belongs. His body is constantly in motion; subtle textures ripple up through his skin and along his limbs, fused with athletic gestures and intentional movements. He is indelibly present – a physical force that commands attention even while making us laugh.

In Giraru Galing Ganhagirri, his work in Ceremony, Bray explores his experience of diaspora, connecting to the storms that bring wind and rain from his Country to where he lives now. He moves through the landscape, internalising the natural patterns and movements of the weather in a manner that is also distinctly queer – a body that is porous yet resilient, liminal yet grounded. Through performance and dance, Bray rebuts those who would confine him to one way of being, instead embracing the beauty of that which is multiple and complex.

— Joel Bray’s commission for Ceremony has been supported by Phillip Keir and Sarah Benjamin through the Keir Foundation.

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Left Seed Mob at a Climate March in Naarm/Melbourne.

Photograph courtesy of Seed Mob Flickr.

Below Tony Albert, Do Not Frack the NT, 2020, house paint on banner. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with generous support from the Australia Council for the Arts and Create NSW, and generous assistance from the Medich Foundation.

Courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney, photograph by Ken Leanfore, image courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art Australia © the artist.

Groundswell The 2019–20 bushfire catastrophe brought the landscape into sharp relief, inspiring a period of artistic mourning among creatives.

But it is connection to Country as championed

by First Peoples activists that may prove the most potent force for climate justice, writes SUSIE ANDERSON, Wergaia/Wemba Wemba peoples.

“Sight is so bound up with modern ways of knowing” – Robert Macfarlane A photograph of a white body on crackled ochre appears in a sustainability magazine with this description: “Bushfires were raging all across Australia at the time and my anxiety levels were high and finding landscapes that were safe enough to photograph was difficult”.

An innocuous postscript concerned for our climate future, but the result centres the photographer’s agenda rather than expressing genuine concern for the land and its people. This sentiment runs alongside a glib and unrelated acknowledgement of the landowners, famous astronomers who used the dry lake as a key tool in their custodianship of Country.

A widely known tension in photography is how a camera offers a certain distance from responsibility. The Susan Sontag catchcry might here be flipped to: regarding the pain of Country that others created, not me! But there’s a convenient amnesia and disjuncture between the creative vision of the photographer above and the realities of living on Indigenous land. Land impacted by the direct actions of settlers who separated it from sustainable custodianship from its traditional owners.

Photographers often use the camera to hold themselves at convenient length from engaging with histories embedded into the Australian landscape. The various terra firma become interchangeable sets that morph into something new no matter where you go: luscious tropical Gondwanaland in one location and a barren, extraterrestrial scene elsewhere. Or Earth in 50 years, wearing the consequences of climate change.

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The deep time of Country remembers what took place.

Country remembers how we were prevented access to food sources and shelter. It remembers the genocide, massacres and warfare, plus the interventions into traditional custodianship of land – the consequences of which we are only just beginning to understand. It’s these unacknowledged memories that become tangible feelings of unease held in the landscape, heard by settler occupants.

Barkandji researcher and curator Zena Cumpston, during a conversation earlier this year, explained to me that in the early days of settlement “our need to access food put us in the greatest danger. That’s directly linked to violence we experienced because when we started to push back trying to get food, stealing sheep and traversing Country – that’s when our lives were most at risk.”

In her booklet Indigenous plant use – an outcome of her 2019 exhibition The living pavilion at the University of Melbourne – Cumpston documented thousands of Kulin Nation plants.

Emphasising the holistic approach of caring for Country, it draws attention to cyclical seasons and the interdependence of all things. Subverting scientific classification is one of the key concerns in Cumpston’s practice. Through exhibitions, writing and research she asks: how can Aboriginal people have agency in the sciences when this field has caused a disproportionate amount of harm? “Especially when we consider its role in body snatching and devastating systems of classification central to the theft of our old people and our children.”

This significance of classification and naming is considered by photographer James Tylor in many of his recent works.

In We call this place... Kaurna Yarta, beautiful depictions of Kaurna Country in South Australia are overlaid with place names in Kaurna language in a copperplate-style script.

The use of a florid, European font reads as a wry emphasis on the reclamation of place. Tylor’s other bodies of work terra botanica i and terra botanica ii refer to the classification work of botanist Joseph Banks, whose task was to collect specimens on Cook’s voyage to Australia and determine whether the land was habitable. The photographs capture the moment of separation, blossoms and leaves severed from their mother plant. The result is a sequence of eerie horror scenes, at once underlining the artifice behind beloved botanic illustrations and photography, and foreshadowing the consequences of Banks’s success. Deeply felt and engaged with Country and its embedded knowledge and memories, Cumpston’s and Tylor’s practices are the antithesis of the photograph mentioned above.

First Nations artists have gone further than interventions into colonial depictions or representations held in archives.

Cumpston’s and Tylor’s projects are practical applications of the holistic knowledge of caring for Country and the environment that is required if we are to make crucial interventions into the climate crisis. Author Tony Birch, in a 2017 essay for the Sydney Review of Books, refers to what Country holds, analysing how amnesia by settler occupants has had a lasting impact on our ecological future. He quotes policymaker and ANU academic Seán Kerins who, in spite of being non-Aboriginal, understands that “caring for Country encompasses being spiritually bound to Country through intimate connections with Ancestral beings still present in the land and waters”.

The unease and anxiety that lingers in landscape is from centuries of occupation that have disrupted the connection.

The First Peoples-led youth climate movement Seed Mob sees these intimate connections to Country as a strength in its campaigns for climate justice. As Australia’s first Indigenous youth climate network, it runs campaigns, fundraises and protests, all with the view to protect Country.

Its approach emphasises sustainable practices of our Ancestors and Elders, highlighting how this custodianship of land can empower young First Peoples.

“From Borroloola in the gulf of the Northern Territory, to mob in Tasmania, to communities across the Kimberley, and island nations throughout the Torres Strait, we support young mob with the skills, confidence, networks and plans to lead our movement for climate justice,” Seed Mob states.

“We believe that by building the power of those most affected and confronting the systemic injustices that have led to the climate crisis, we can build strong, sustainable and resilient communities where everyone can thrive.”

Given that today’s young people will grapple with the long-term consequences of climate change in Australia and beyond, this leadership and momentum is so important. Seed Mob refers to itself as “Elders of the future” with projects and campaigns that instill hope in the ongoing bid for land rights, self-determination and climate justice across our communities.

With ancestral knowledge embedded in its approach, this understanding of deep time foregrounds the intelligence of our Ancestors and reframes their custodianship of land with a lens of authenticity. As white guilt and eco-anxiety reach new heights, Seed Mob’s bid to become an independent organisation is well timed. Its current campaign is a bid to fundraise $1.5 million which will enable its independence from the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, a move towards autonomy it says is “critical in the collective fight for climate justice”.

With such staunch young people advocating for climate justice, it’s possible that there is hope for Country yet. Birch’s suggestion is that the way forward requires a “shift in the collective psyche of white Australia [and] necessitates an acceptance of, and a subsequent ability to embrace, the realities of living on and in Indigenous Country”. This poses a direct challenge to non-Aboriginal people, particularly creatives, whose struggle with the personal responsibility that comes with occupying stolen land is exemplified in the photograph mentioned at the start of this essay.

What we need to move through these dual anxieties is not surface level. Robert Macfarlane’s astute observations in his book about the worlds buried beneath our feet, Underland, are bound up in years of research about deep time, reflecting on how peeling back layers of what is underfoot will benefit our planet’s future.

Yet awareness and acknowledgement alone does not create change. When we have been speaking on and adding to the upper layers for so long, to pause and feel, listen, hear what is held within the ground that’s holding us up is the radical act of now.

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The absence of sound

Ceremony artist JOEL SPRING – a Wiradjuri researcher and architect – discusses the connection between sound, Country and ceremony with sound artist E FISHPOOL, Yuin people.

Sound is the most deep and innate experience of Country, but it is the least spoken about. We prioritise sound less than we used to in terms of our culture being oral. Because of the imposition of the academy, writing has become a priority.

It’s been imposed on us, but sound still cuts through everything.

E FISHPOOL (EF)

I think you hit the nail on the head. Because sound is immaterial in the Western framework, I think it is often overlooked. Because it’s overlooked in how it is registered, there’s a strength there, too. There’s something interesting about linking back to our cultures as always being passed down orally that builds a muscle within community, and within certain groups, and within certain spaces. In the more Western frameworks, it’s the other parts that represent a culture, be those the objects or the optics, things which can be stolen or learnt and copied or commodified. I think for mob, there’s a really good way of filtering through all of that noise. Culture has always been sound first, optic second.

JOEL SPRING (JS)

Whether it’s language or sound that language comes from, the sound of Country, it’s always been that immediate connection.

That’s what language is. It’s between the people and Country.

Opposite Joel Spring, Wiradjuri people, work in progress, 2021, image courtesy and © the artist.

Really listening to it takes time. There’s such a generosity in listening again and again and again. There’s something that reveals itself to you the more time you give to it. For me, from Wiradjuri culture, Wiradjuri country, Wiradjuri language: that is yindyamarra. That is going slowly. That is showing respect.

And when you show respect to something through listening, it reveals itself to you.

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“That experience of absence and of silence is a large part of how I have navigated my own connection to culture, connection to country and relationships as well.”

JOEL SPRING

Repetition is a really important way to really learn about something through and through.

EF

Listening and hearing are operational in Indigenous communities across the country, across the world. If you want to talk about language, you want to talk about connection, you want to talk about family. Hearing is a resource under colonialism and it’s controlled, dealt with in particular ways for particular means. That plays out at many registers for blackfellas because it is that connection that can be heard and felt that results in ‘ontological disturbance’, as Aileen Moreton-Robinson would call it.

JS

I think about repetition a lot in thinking about dub music or DJing in general. Electronic music is an art form created

by Black people, whether it’s Black people in Chicago or Black people elsewhere in the world. It’s making stuff out of stuff that already exists. It’s a relationship to existing art forms or existing ideas to make a new thing, to make a new art form.

Whether my music’s 130bpm, electronic or just a synth piece, all of it is a reflection of the relations that I have with my family – the conversations, the fights, the joy I experience – and the walks that I have on Country. A lot of that is embedded through samples. It’s my thought; a reflection of everything that I experience all the time.

EF

Recently, it has everything to do with fire. It has everything to do with how sad and depressed I am after the fires. Day-to-day stuff, like having conversations with local land services, going to federal government reviews on their policies, and just eating

Portrait of Joel Spring, Wiradjuri people, image courtesy and © the artist.

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scones and having cups of tea and those conversations often going nowhere, or people being pissed off and then going home.

Country’s still in this devastatingly vulnerable position. I ask: “How do we actually fix this?” and then I just make some music.

A lot of it’s just an outlet because I’m sad.

I think there’s something really interesting about who you’re addressing, who the sound of the thing is addressed to. There’s a quality, especially the most recent release, that feels like it is speaking to someone more aligned with your own subjectivity.

JS

You’re not speaking to white people with the work you’re making. For the whole arts and creative infrastructure, and media more broadly in the West, the invisible audience is heteronormative, male, straight subjectivity. There’s something joyful about understanding the space that you’re creating is not for that. If they want to listen then they can, but it’s not about addressing them.

Sound and listening are so important and became a focal point in the research that I was doing down on Yuin Country.

Sound bleeds through a wall. It bleeds across a boundary line.

The sound of an ecosystem, the sound of a system in action or in health or in death bleeds through your property boundary, bleeds through your understanding of the damage done to your house. It’s shared, in a sense, through your presence there, whether that’s illegal occupation or a sovereign connection to that Country, you’re all connected to that sound. It is that relationship that you undeniably are in with Country when you’re on it.

Country’s so much more than just the sound, but it’s something that became really easy to talk to people about too, because the absence of something can be a good way to talk about that thing. You understand that you miss the birds. Whether you’ve been visiting this plot of land for 70 years or whether you’ve had an unbroken connection to that Country, that’s the quality that we understand.

That experience of absence and of silence is a large part of how I have navigated my own connection to culture, connection to Country and relationships as well. My grandmother, my mother’s family, my Wiradjuri family, a lot of them aren’t around. There’s a lot of quietness and a lot of silence in relation to stories of what has happened and things that continue, including a relationship to language.

The silence of Country now because of the fires speaks volumes, but then that still isn’t enough to prosecute the government or for accountability.

These aren’t symbolic ideas. I’m not talking about the idea of perfect silence. I’m talking about the absence of sound in relationship to a healthy landscape. I’m talking about a smoke cloud as actually containing everything that was in that place.

Everything’s in that.

JS

That’s why we sit with the silence. That’s why we acknowledge it. Because we’ve got to hold it. Holding is a labour of care.

Just because we can’t hear it and just because we don’t see, doesn’t mean that it wasn’t there and doesn’t mean that it’s not there and doesn’t mean that it’s not a part of us.

I think about the potential of grieving through sound.

Two days after my friend died, I went and bought a keyboard.

I didn’t talk to anyone for months. I just taught myself how to play piano. It was the closest memory I had of them. That’s how I started making music. I’ve never had any training.

EF

Imagine if politicians sang. Imagine if that was the way that we communicated, even having a difficult conversation with a partner, it would be great. And you could join in.

That is what we used to do. This is how we talked about stuff.

There are a lot of ways that communication can be expanded on through sound and made more meaningful and memorable.

I’m interested in the sonic world that is created by the West and colonialism, like what sounds qualify as instrumental. What is nice? And what is not nice? Which pretty much, down to the core, was always racial. It was always, that’s them; this is us.

This is what we sound like; this is what they sound like, whether it be through language or musicality, all these sort of things.

JS

But also the way in which vocalising, like singing together and other things, really has power. That power can be good; it can be bad. It’s powerful. The songs that people sing in sport games move people to violence. But also, singing in a choir is good for your body. It is powerful. That’s why I enjoyed going to all the rallies that my mum dragged me to, because I got to scream and swear. Doing that with people is powerful.

It makes you feel connected.

What you’re saying is something that I feel every single day of my life. There are things that I’m finding out about my family that happened when we were kids and the real reasons why people left. The silence is the story, but then people go their whole lives without saying anything. Then that silence gets passed on and it can break people. It breaks families apart.

EF

It’s completely imposed by colonialism. If you don’t have that testimony, then you’re no one, you can’t live, you can’t be. You can’t live fully as who you are. What you’re saying turns that on its head: ‘This is the evidence. I don’t have anything to say, but this is the evidence that this thing happened.’

It has real life-and-death implications for people because so many take their stories to the grave. People go their whole lives and only say something right at the end.

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James Tylor

Kaurna artist JAMES TYLOR uses the historical 19th century photographic process of the Becquerel daguerreotype with the aid of modern technology to create contemporary images that re-contextualise the representation of Australian society and history. Photography was historically used to document Aboriginal culture and the European colonisation of Australia.

Here, James takes us through the process of creating The Darkness of Enlightenment, his new series of daguerreotypes for Ceremony that explores 19th century European recordings of Kaurna language and culture during the British colonisation of the Kaurna nation in South Australia.

All images: James Tylor, Kaurna people, in his studio, work in progress, Kamberri/ Canberra, 2021 © the artist.

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1. Exposing the daguerreotypes using the contact printing method.

2. T he Becquerel developing method of exposing the daguerreotype in the UV light of the sun.

3. Heating the daguerreotype with a blowtorch during the gold guilding to stablise the image.

4. Inspecting the finished daguerreotype, before sealing the image behind museum glass.

“My work attempts to highlight the mistakes, mistranslations and loss of knowledge in the social documentation of Kaurna culture by European colonists.”

JAMES TYLOR

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Dylan River

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Mparntwe/Alice Springs-based filmmaker and Kaytetye man DYLAN RIVER comes from a long line of First Nations storytellers, writes KELLI COLE, Warumungu/ Luritja peoples, Curator, Special Projects, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art.

Storytelling is at the core of First Nations’ existence. Just as Country is essential to our identities, so is telling a story.

In fact, story is inseparable from Country. It is how we know Country, how we respect it, care for it and pass it on as rich, embodied knowledge for the next generation.

The story is an act of belonging, rich with relationships, connections and lore. It is also an act of resistance and of truth-telling.

Filmmaker Dylan River agrees: “My parents drummed into me the idea that if you’re going to do something, do it with importance, so if you’re going to tell a story, make it important,” he says. “Storytelling has been in our culture for thousands of years – it’s very present in Aboriginal culture, the oral history and the rich storytelling. I loved taking photos because photography was something that was always encouraged by my parents. My grandmother was a photographer and my dad was a cinematographer, so storytelling has always been in my family.

Moving to cinematography was just a natural progression for me.”

If the eyes really are the window to our soul, then Dylan’s films can be seen as monuments of Country and messages from our Ancestors. Onscreen, the artist, cinematographer and director (who happens to also be my nephew by marriage) captures intimate moments of cultural significance, stories of the past, important stories that need to be retold.

Dylan describes his work as a form of activism for his people: “There have been a lot of filmmakers before me … fighting for First Nations people’s voices. It is up to me and this other wave of filmmakers to keep that and keep fighting for it. We still have a long way to go for the country to be as proud of our Indigenous heritage, but filmmaking is one way to do that.”

For Ceremony, Dylan is developing a new work that explores and celebrates his profound connection to Country through macro photography. The work features extreme close-ups of his Kaytetye homeland north of Mparntwe/Alice Springs, as seen through Dylan’s eyes. It is a technically ambitious work, with Dylan using a specialist camera with a macro lens.

Born and partially raised in Mparntwe, Dylan hails from a remarkable family lineage and is no stranger to the arts.

At the heart is his grandmother Freda Glynn, who co-founded the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA), Australia’s largest Indigenous broadcaster, in 1980 to promote First Nations music and culture. During the 1988 Bicentenary, while non-Indigenous people were celebrating 200 years of colonisation, CAAMA Productions was established so First Nations people could have a voice in their own language in film and television. This extended to 8KIN FM, the first Aboriginal radio station in Australia.

CAAMA has since become a breeding ground for boundarypushing filmmakers, directors, producers, cinematographers, sound engineers and all-round First Nations storytellers.

Actress Deborah Mailman credits “Aunty Freda” with helping provide the training that allowed Aboriginal people to “sustain the culture and languages of Central Australia”.

The first wave of CAAMA filmmakers included a veritable family tree: Dylan’s aunty and Kaytetye woman Erica Glynn,

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his father, Kaytetye man and director Warwick Thornton, Rachel Perkins, Arrernte/Kalkadoon peoples, who is the director sister of Hetti Perkins (curator of the Ceremony exhibition), and my cousin Beck Cole, Warumungu/Luritja, who is the mother of Warwick Thornton’s daughter Luka May Glynn-Cole. It also included my sister Danielle MacLean, Warumungu/Luritja peoples and her production partner, writer, director and producer Steven McGregor, and writer-director David Tranter, Alyawarra people. Dylan’s cousin Tanith Glynn-Maloney, Kaytetye/Luritja peoples, joined CAAMA in 2002 as a trainee. Years later she she went onto work on Erica’s 2018 documentary about Aunty Freda, She Who Must Be Loved.

Most of the family have worked on one another’s projects in various capacities, including Dylan, who has won many awards and accolades for his direction and cinematography.

Dylan was second unit director on his father’s acclaimed feature Sweet Country – which won six AACTA awards including Best Film in 2018 – and on the TV series The Beach and Mystery Road. Dylan also wrote and directed the web series Robbie Hood, a black comedy about a precocious teenager growing up in Mparntwe/Alice Springs, which won Dylan and his cousin Tanith, who produced the show, the 2019 AACTA Award for Best Online Comedy or Drama.

Black comedy is a way in which First Nations people make light of subjects that are too hard to discuss; it strengthens the morale of the oppressed and undermines the morale of the oppressors.

We make fun of ourselves and take ownership of it as Blackfellas, and series like Robbie Hood are a way of responding to this.

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Despite growing up surrounded by people in the industry, as a child Dylan was indifferent when his family spoke about their work as filmmakers. Although born in Mparntwe, Dylan grew up off Country in Djubuguli/Sydney cove with his mother and his sister Rona Glynn-Mcdonald. Rona is now CEO of the First Nations-led not-for-profit Common Ground, which promotes and elevates First Nations people through a digital platform. Dylan sits alongside his sister on the Common Ground board and the siblings are among the new generation leading the way with truth-telling for First Nations people.

But Dylan was born with sand and adrenaline pumping through his veins and he returned as a teenager to Mparntwe.

There, he spent his formative years at the foothills of the Tjoritja/MacDonnell Ranges, chasing the dream of the Finke Desert Race, an off-road, multi-terrain two-day bike, car and buggy race that begins in Mparntwe and continues throughout the desert to the Aputula/Finke community.

It became the subject of Dylan’s documentary Finke: There & Back, a fast-paced tale centred on the iconic race and its motorcycle enthusiasts. There are myriad characters and it is a wonderful, emotional personal insight into a sport and the participants – including Dylan, who has raced eight times.

The title references the act of racing: you just have to get there and back and survive.

Dylan makes films with a timeless nature that pulsate with connection to his family and Country; there is a beauty and interconnectedness within his pictures. As well as his work for the Ceremony exhibition, Dylan has been working on numerous

solo projects. His work as a cinematographer fills most of his time and motivates him to stay behind the camera, telling stories close to home, combining life and work as one.

It is filmmakers such as Dylan and his family who have embraced technology and exponentially transformed the way in which First Nations people have been documented and recorded. From capturing our child’s first steps to recording the stories of our Elders – many of whom spent their adult life not wanting to talk about their hardships – our songlines and our stories are important, are being told and are finally being heard.

Opposite Dylan River (director), Robbie Hood (still), 2019, produced by Tanith GlynnMaloney, image courtesy and © the artist.

Below Dylan and his family, from left: Erica Glynn, Dylan River, Freda Glynn, Warwick Thornton and Tanith Glynn-Maloney at the Adelaide Film Festival in 2018.

Photograph by and © James Elsby.

Page 52 Portrait of Dylan River, Kaytetye people, in Mparntwe/Alice Springs, 2021.

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Meet the artists of the National Gallery’s fourth Triennial celebrating First Nations art, who explore how ceremony is at the nexus of Country, culture and community.

Ceremony: The Artists

Kamilaroi/Gomeroi artist Penny Evans has developed a diverse and unique ceramic practice. Penny’s work is informed by time spent in landscape and going back to Country, which is part of a broader decolonising process for the artist. Penny’s work is for her own healing and spiritual development, but also an homage to her grandfather, great-grandmothers and their life struggles in a climate of virulent racism in Australia. For Ceremony, Penny has created the sculptural installation, BURN Gudhuwa-li, exploring the cultural significance of fire and the devastating impact of failing to follow Aboriginal protocols of caring for Country.

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Joel Bray, Wiradjuri people

Joel Spring is a Wiradjuri artist working across research, architecture, installation and speculative projects.

Raised between Redfern, New South Wales, and Mparntwe/Alice Springs, Joel’s upbringing combined tradition with the contemporary. His work focuses on the contested narratives of Gadigal Country/Sydney’s and Australia’s urban culture and First Nations history in the face of ongoing colonisation. Joel has experience creating, producing and recording podcasts and other sonic work.

For Ceremony, Joel will create a cultural architecture intervention exploring the absence created by bushfires and the importance of caring for Country.

Joel Bray’s practice focuses on performance and dance, drawing on his Wiradjuri cultural heritage. Joel’s works are intimate encounters in unorthodox spaces in which audience members are invited in as co-storytellers to explore the experiences of fair-skinned Aboriginal people and the experiences of contemporary gay men in an increasingly digital and isolated world.

His body becomes the intersection site of those songlines – heritage, skin colour and queer sexuality. For Ceremony, Bray presents Giraru Galing Ganhagirri, a new multiscreen video installation that explores the artist’s embodied relationship with Country and experience of diaspora.

Andy Snelgar, Ngemba people Ngemba man Andy Snelgar is a visual artist focused on traditional carving.

Based on the New South Wales north coast, Andy first started exploring carving almost 30 years ago and now works with both hardwoods and softwoods to create his works. From carved shields to clubs and boomerangs, Andy’s creations are recognisable by his skilled ability to work with the wood’s organic shapes and his intricate line work. When selecting the wood for his works, Andy seeks out the “song in the tree”. For Ceremony, Andy will present a new series of engraved cultural objects including shields and clubs.

Compiled by Jessica Barnes

Penny Evans, Kamilaroi/Gomeroi people

Joel Spring, Wiradjuri people

“Ceremony transforms, celebrating what was and what will be. Like my work, it is a reminder that everything changes, but we forever hold our past, present and future within.”

ROBERT FIELDING

Nicole Foreshew, Wiradjuri people, and the late Boorljoonngali, Gija people

Robert Fielding, Western Arrernte/ Yankunytjatjara people

Nicole Foreshew is a member of the Wiradjuri Nation and works across a range of mediums, from photography to sculpture to film. Nicole’s practice maintains an ongoing thematic exploration of her heritage through contemporary and innovative frameworks. For Ceremony, Nicole will exhibit alongside and create work inspired by her profound relationship and collaboration with the late Gija artist of Nagarra skin Booljoongali (whose name means ‘big rain coming down with lots of wind’), who was a senior artist member of the Warmun Art Centre in the East Kimberley.

Robert Fielding is a contemporary artist of Pakistani, Afghan, Western Arrernte and Yankunytjatjara descent who lives in Mimili Community on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands of South Australia. Robert’s explorations of tensions between community life and global cultural shifts are personal and informed by family history. The 77km road to his neighbouring community is scattered with abandoned cars, which Robert refers to as the “Graveyards in Between”. For Ceremony, Robert will resurrect a car wreck, with its strategic positioning commenting on the political annexing of Ngambri-Ngunnawal land.

Compiled by Jessica Barnes

“For Ceremony, I wanted to represent Mother Earth and how everything comes from The Mother (Nanguu Baray), and the importance of recognising her in everything we do. This recognition is real and made real by our actions, respecting the earth and women.”

ANDY SNELGAR

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S.J Norman, Wiradjuri people S.J Norman is a cross-disciplinary Koori artist, writer and curator whose work embraces a diversity of disciplines.

Through his work, S.J aims “to implicate the body of the audience and the body of the performer as co-agents in magical acts, through which they seek to forge hybrid languages of ritual and knowledgemaking”. For Ceremony, S.J presents an iteration of Bone Library from the Unsettling Suite where he considers the living essence of so-called ‘dead’ First Nations languages through a live inscription, collaborating with members of the Walgalu community to engrave a dictionary onto the bones of “totemic colonial beasts” (sheep and cattle).

Margaret Rarru Garrawurra and Helen Ganalmirriwuy Garrawurra Liyagawumirr/Garrawurra peoples

“As Rarru and Ganalmirriwuy immerse the gunga (pandanus spiralis) fibre in local and secret recipes of natural dyes to create their trademark mol (black) hues, so too their bathi (dilly bags) and dupun (hollow logs) are steeped in Liyagauwumirr and Garrawurra tradition.

When asked what draws her to use mol in her artworks Margaret Rarru says: ‘Because black is beautiful’.”

HETTI PERKINS

Sisters Margaret Rarru Garrawurra and Helen Ganalmirriwuy Garrawurra create across the mediums of painting and weaving. Born in northern Arnhem Land, they were taught by their father important Liyagawumirr clan designs and to understand the deep, poetic meanings of ancient creation narratives.

They also learnt the cultural meanings of woven fibre objects and a range of weaving techniques. Now the sisters paint poles and barks in distinctive mol (black), red (miku), white (watharr) and yellow (buthjalak) pigments with Liyagawumirr designs. For Ceremony, Rarru and Ganalmirriwuy will create a series of weavings – or mol mindirr (black conical baskets/dilly bags) – and dupun (memorial poles) painted in their signature Garrawurra clan miny’tji (design). For the Triennial they have developed a contemporary miny’tji inspired by the dhuwa gurrumattji (magpie goose of the Dhuwa moiety).

Kunmanara Carroll, Luritja/Pintupi peoples Kunmanara Carroll’s ceramics combine paint and clay as they become a type of memory theatre for the artist. Born in Haasts Bluff, he later moved to Papunya then travelled with his family to Eagle Bore, north of Ernabella in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands in South Australia, where he lived until he passed away in September 2021.

Kunmanara used art to translate personal memories and told traditional stories via contemporary methods, using his unique style to depict his father’s Country. For Ceremony, Kunmanara created several ceramic works that reference significant sites in his ancestral lands.

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“I make tjukurpa (story) on ceramics about the big kapi (water). It’s to carry the story along from the old people, generation to generation, showing the young people.

The old people told me stories about the snake before, and now I’m old man I tell young people.”

KUNMANARA CARROLL

“My work is metaphoric and symbolic paralleling of daily acts of care for the body and mind, and the ceremonial acts of care for the body and spirit after death, presents a contemporary union of Indigenous connection to spirituality and ceremonial practices – enmeshing personal, cultural and universal acts of cleansing, grounding, meditation and protection.”

HAYLEY MILLAR BAKER

Hayley Millar Baker, Gunditjmara people Using multimedia techniques to create monochromatic photographic works, Hayley Millar Baker’s practice examines human experiences of time and memory.

Hayley is a Gunditjmara research-based artist who uses photography to interrogate the way memories are made through acts of remembering and misremembering.

She reflects on the potential for personal recollections and historical accounts to become improvised and embellished; human experiences through a lens that is non-exclusive and nonlinear.

For Ceremony, Hayley will create a new narrative video work reflecting on her connection to spirits and her Ancestors.

Mantua Nangala, Pintupi people Pintupi woman Mantua Nangala is a painter who comes from a distinguished family of artists. Her father, Anatjari Tjampitjinpa, began painting in the 1970s and was a highly influential shareholder in Papunya Tula Artists (PTA), the renowned Aboriginal-owned and directed arts centre northwest of Mparntwe/Alice Springs. Mantua created her first painting for PTA in early 1998, shortly after the original group of Kiwirrkura ladies established themselves.

Mantua’s Country lies west of Kiwirrkura and deep into the Gibson desert where rows of parallel sand dunes dominate the landscape. Her paintings relate to the epic travels of the ‘Kanaputa’ women who travelled from the west, passing through the celebrated women’s sites of Mukula, Marrapinti and Yunala.

For Ceremony, Mantua is creating a major new triptych depicting a significant ancestral women’s site near the salt lake Wilkinkarra/Lake Mackay.

Dr Matilda House and Paul Girrawah House Ngambri/Ngunnawal peoples Ngambri/Ngunnawal Traditional Custodians Dr Matilda House and her son, Paul Girrawah House, are renowned activists within Kamberri/Canberra’s community. For Ceremony, they will undertake the traditional practice of tree scarring in the National Gallery Sculpture Garden. Scarred trees are a significant expression of Aboriginal culture, most prevalent in the country’s southeast, where the bark of a eucalypt is removed to create cultural objects such as shields and coolamons. Tree scarring is still practised as part of contemporary efforts to reinsert Indigenous presence on Country and revitalise cultural practices.

“When I’m painting, I’m at home on my ngurra in my head, thinking about Marrapinti stories and songs, Minyma Tjuta [all the women] – it makes me feel good, palya.”

MANTUA NANGALA

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YARRENYTY ARLTERE Artists: Marlene Rubuntja, Western Arrarnta people, Trudy Inkamala, Western Arrarnta/Luritja peoples, Dulcie Sharpe, Luritja/Arrernte peoples, Rhonda Sharpe, Luritja people, Roxanne Petrick, Alyawarre people, Nanette Sharpe Western Arrarnta people, Sheree Inkamala, Luritja/Pitjantjara/Western Arrarnta peoples, Rosabella Ryder, Arrernte people, Louise Robertson, Walpiri people, Cornelius Ebatarinja, Western Arrarnta/Arrernte peoples

TANGENTYERE Artists: Betty Conway, Pitjantjatjara people, Nyinta Donald, Pitjantjatjara people, Sally M. Mulda, Pitjantjatjara/ Luritja peoples, Majorie Williams, Western Arrarnta people, Lizzie Jako, Pitjantjatjara people, Grace Robinya, Western Arrarnta people The Yarrenyty Arltere and Tangentyere art centres in the Northern Territory represent many local talented artists.

For Ceremony, 16 artists – led by Marlene Rubuntja – will collaborate to create the soft sculpture Blak Parliament House, an Aboriginal take on Australia’s political heartland.

Robert Andrew, Yawuru people Robert Andrew’s unique artistic practice combines electromechanical machines that erode and expose substrates, build stories and create residues. A descendant of the Yawuru people from the Rubibi/Broome area in Western Australia, he also holds European and Filipino heritage. Robert’s works manifest as visually scraped-back and built-up palimpsests that reference technology, natural materials and artefacts. Robert communicates his contemporary relationship to Country while acknowledging colonial disruption to uncover forgotten histories. For Ceremony, Robert will create a new ‘writing machine’, revealing a word over the course of the exhibition.

Dylan River, Kaytetye people Mparntwe/Alice Springs-based director and Kaytetye man Dylan River is making waves in the Australian film industry.

He comes from a long line of storytellers: his grandmother Freda Glynn co-founded the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association, the country’s largest Indigenous broadcaster, and his father is acclaimed director Warwick Thornton, who created the revered films Sweet Country and Samson and Delilah. Dylan describes his work as a form of activism for his people. For Ceremony, Dylan is developing a new work that explores and celebrates his profound connection to Country and ceremony through macro (extreme close-up) photography.

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“Storytelling has been in our culture for thousands of years – it’s very present in Aboriginal culture, the oral history and the rich storytelling … I love taking photos, because photography was something that was always encouraged by my parents. My grandmother was a photographer and my dad is a cinematographer, so storytelling has always been in my family. Moving to cinematography was just a natural progression for me.”

DYLAN RIVER

Darrell Sibosado, Bard people Darrell Sibosado is a Bard man from Lombadina on the Dampier Peninsula of the Kimberley Coast whose artistic practice has been informed by the traditional motifs and techniques of his people. Through his art, Darrell is focused on the creation of etchings – using traditional warrior and initiation designs to evoke the idea of sacrifice and the frontier wars, as well as contemporary events such as deaths in custody and youth suicide. For Ceremony, Darrell presents works that draw on his cultural inheritance and amplify the scale of the imagery to reflect the power of Aalingoon (Rainbow Serpent), whose shed scales are the pearl shells upon which the riji designs are inscribed.

This page (clockwise, from top): Darrell Sibosado, Bard people, Lombadina. Photograph: Simon Santi, The West Australian © WEST AUSTRALIAN NEWSPAPERS LIMITED; Gutiŋarra Yunupiŋu, Dhuwala people, at Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Arts Centre, image courtesy and © The Mulka Project, photograph: Joseph Brady; James Tylor, Kaurna people, in his studio, work in progress, Kamberri/ Canberra, 2021 © the artist.

Opposite page (clockwise, from top): Robert Andrew, Yawuru people.

Photograph: National Gallery of Australia; Dylan River, Kaytetye people, 2021. Photograph: National Gallery of Australia; Marlene Rubuntja, Western Arrarnta people, with her work, 2016, image courtesy and © Yarrenyty Arltere Artists. Photograph: Sarah Andrews.

Page 56 (clockwise, from top): Joel Bray, Wiradjuri people, Biladurang, 2017, performance, Melbourne Fringe, image courtesy and © the artist. Photograph: Pippa Samaya; Penny Evans, Kamilaroi/Gomeroi people. Photograph: National Gallery of Australia; Joel Spring, Wiradjuri people, image courtesy and © the artist.

James Tylor, Kaurna people

Gutiŋarra Yunupiŋu, Dhuwala people

James Tylor is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Kamberri/ Canberra, exploring the Australian environment, culture and social history through photography, video, painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, sound, scents and food. James is a Kaurna man whose practice focuses on 19th century Australia and its continual effect on present-day Australia. Through his work, James intends to recontextualise the representation of Australian society and history. For Ceremony, James will present a new series of daguerreotypes and cultural objects exploring his connection to Country and culture.

Gutiŋarra Yunupiŋu, better known as Guti, is a filmmaker whose documentaries focus on cultural ceremonies and events on Country. Born Deaf, Guti has overcome barriers to use his artistic talent to capture stories of his Ancestors and kin via film – describing his work as “an expression of myself, my land and my people”.

For Ceremony, Guti will present a video installation that represents his Ancestral identity, evoking his father’s Gumatj bäru (crocodile) clan and his saltwater Country in northeast Arnhem Land.

Page 57 (clockwise, from top): Robert Fielding, Western Arrernte /Yankuntjatjara people, image courtesy and © Mimili Maku Arts. Photograph: Meg Hansen; Andy Snelgar, Ngemba people, 2021, image courtesy the artist.

Photograph: Julie Slavin; Nicole Foreshew, Wiradjuri people, image courtesy and © the artist.

Page 58 (clockwise, from top): Margaret Rarru, Liyagawumirr/ Garrawurra peoples, 2017, image courtesy Milingimbi Art and Culture. Photograph: Rosita Holmes; Helen Ganalmirriwuy, Liyagawumirr/Garrawurra peoples, 2018, image courtesy Milingimbi Art and Culture. Photograph: Ben Ward; S.J Norman, Wiradjuri pepole. Photograph: National Gallery of Australia.

Page 59 (clockwise, from top): Mantua Nangala, Pintupi people, 2017, image courtesy and © Papunya Tula Artists.

Photograph: Matt Frost; Dr Matilda House and Paul Girrawah House, Ngambri/Ngunnawal peoples, with scar tree, Kamberri/Canberra, 2021 © the artists; Hayley Millar Baker, Gunditjmara people, image courtesy the artist. Photograph: Jade Florence.

“Yolŋu ceremonies have always been and will always be the backbone of my life.”

GUTIŊARRA YUNUPIŊU

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Family ties

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HETTI KEMARRE PERKINS, Arrernte and Kalkadoon peoples, was born in 1965, the year of the Freedom Ride, when her activist father, Charles Perkins AO, famously led a 15-day bus journey across regional New South Wales to draw attention to racism and the living conditions of Aboriginal people. It was a defining moment in Australian activism and an auspicious start for Hetti, the National Gallery’s Senior Curator-at-Large and this issue’s Guest Editor, who has spent her life advocating for First Nations art and artists – and even raising some herself. During a 30-year, multifaceted international career, Hetti has worked on many projects including dOCUMENTA (13) and co-curated Australia’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale, as well as written, presented and produced documentary series for ABC TV and SBS/NITV. She is respected for her commitment to the curation, collection development and scholarship of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, as well as her mentorship and advancement of artists. While curating the 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony at the Gallery, Hetti talks with Artonview Editor SOPHIE TEDMANSON.

So you were born during the year of the Freedom Ride?

SOPHIE TEDMANSON (ST)

HETTI PERKINS (HP) Yes.

Mum was at home pregnant with me while Dad was travelling around on the bus.

Two years later the Referendum happened, so when I was born I was not counted in the Census. Quite a lot of us have that common experience of having that change in our status as Australians in our lifetimes.

ST

How did that shape you as a person?

My father was involved in the Referendum campaign, too, and from a very young age I was able to be a part of whatever was happening, whether I realised it or not. I guess being in demonstrations, observing some of those intense conversations – even if I didn’t understand what they were talking about – was something that influenced my way of thinking about being in the world from a very young age.

HP

Opposite Hetti Perkins, Arrernte/ Kalkadoon peoples, aged nine, and her siblings, Rachel, four, and Adam, six, join their father, Charles, protesting at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy outside Parliament House in 1974. Photograph © CanberraTimes /ACT Heritage Library.

It makes me feel that the work I do is very much part of a political process. I feel I’m more of a cultural activist than a curator, and that’s definitely something that I have inherited. It’s just my life experience that all we do, we do for our people.

That’s why an inclusive approach is really important to me, one that’s founded on listening, making sure that people who don’t have a voice can have one.

I’m really interested in artists who haven’t been

in a National Gallery Triennial before, some who don’t have as established a practice as others, particularly those from the east coast of Australia – trying to shine a light on areas that haven’t been seen previously. That is a very important part of the role: to reflect the diversity of our communities, not only through their lives and practices, but in the ideas of their work, and the processes of cultural revival that are happening in our communities and the role of activism.

ST Was

the theme of Ceremony something that you always wanted to curate this Triennial around, or was it a reaction to everything that has happened over the past few years such as the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, the impact of the bushfires and climate change?

HP Our communities

have been tackling these issues for a long, long time. What has sustained us has been our culture. The theme came from a lot of different things: my personal experience of political activism, such as the Tent Embassy – which will have its 50th anniversary in 2022 – or being in ceremony and being painted up and dancing, and watching other ceremonies, and then seeing someone like Emily Kngwarreye’s work.

Her style very much captures that idea of ceremony, particularly the stripes, the bold lines – there’s something beautiful in that repeated action, that

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ritualised or ceremonial act. I’m really interested in what the artist is doing when they’re participating in that, this idea of channelling and reiterating things. Of course, it’s something that’s very much part of being from a culture that doesn’t have a written language – it’s all about oral traditions and visual representations of things.

Another important understanding of the concept of ceremony is the ‘inside and outside’; we’re just looking at the outside, not inside knowledge.

And so we have been careful to consult with people, and it has been wonderful to work with NgambriNgunnawal Traditional Custodian Dr Matilda House and make sure she was fine with it. The ceremonial act is a continuing and vital part of our everyday experiences as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. She really welcomed that to be something that the exhibition explored.

I spent a lot of my young life living in Kamberri/ Canberra because Dad was a public servant here, but like one you’ve never seen before … in many ways, he really was a servant of the public, the public being his people. And believe me, he really was 24/7 a servant, a willing instrument of his people’s ambitions and aspirations. One of the things that was very significant to me, and really fed into this idea of Ceremony, is that the National Gallery is located on Ngambri-Ngunnawal lands, in the heart of the state of political power in this country – whitefella political power – a place where, of course, many decisions are made that affect and influence the lives of our people.

Ceremony, for me, feels like the nexus between Country, community and culture. That’s where those kinds of things all come together, and are expressed in this Ceremony.

ST When you were

growing up Kamberri/Canberra, didn’t your mother run an art gallery in your garage?

HP My

mum, Eileen, is non-Indigenous. Her background is German and she was the first in hergeneration to marry outside of the German community. She has always felt very privileged to be part of an Aboriginal family and she wanted us kids growing up in Kamberri/Canberra to have access to our culture. The National Gallery hadn’t opened yet, so there was no place for people to see Aboriginal art in Kamberri/Canberra, so she opened the Aboriginal Heritage Gallery in 1977. I remember her taking out the garage doors and putting in sliding doors and painting it.

It wasn’t flash by any means, but there were paintings from Papunya Tula Artists, Pukatja/Ernabella works, bark paintings, weavings and textiles. She also held fashion parades there with Aboriginal models, and I remember [then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser’s wife] Tamie Fraser coming through. It was a way for

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our own mob to celebrate and have a place to see and experience our culture.

Mum really loved being able to do that, particularly for us kids. I spent a lot of time in there because we had books and all sorts of things. I used to just sit down there and read and look at art and actually get to handle things, arrange things and put things on the walls. How lucky to be able to have that sort of experience growing up.

ST Because didn’t you want

to be an artist as well?

HP I did, yes,

from quite a young age. But I realised I wasn’t good enough. I mean, I can do a drawing, but when it comes to originality … who wants to be a photocopier when they grow up? That’s also another reason I so much admire and respect artists because, having sort of failed on that journey myself, I have an insight into what it takes. You’ve got to have that ability to see things differently, which is also why the more experimental arts and those kinds of practices are currently of particular interest to me.

ST What was

the best advice your dad gave you?

HP I was once

freaking out about doing a public talk and Dad said: “You’ve got to get up there.

It’s not about you. If you get a chance to speak for your people, you just get up there and do it, and you do a good job.” I think that probably comes a bit back to how I feel about being a curator.

I think one of the most important things was watching Dad. Being with him was like school for me and my siblings – my brother Adam and sister Rachel. We were responsible, part of the community, part of society, part of this nation.

And that’s why I love what the climate change activists like Seed Mob and the school students’ movement are doing – making a contribution and participating in ways that we can and feel like we’re part of that story and that we have a place in that story.

Fortunate as we are to be Aboriginal and to live in Australia, of course, that comes with responsibilities and obligations. So I think that was something that we were really fortunate to experience. It was kind of a natural thing to do. It’s just what you do.

Dad said his mother once said to him: “If you’re not doing the right thing, you’re doing the wrong thing.” That was his guiding principle, and that’s something that he passed on to us. Also, seeing him with people, he had a real humility and respect no matter who they were – whether in Kamberri/ Canberra or in the communities around central Australia, in Mparntwe/Alice Springs.

He loved having us around and I think we’re very lucky to have learnt just by watching him.

ST How often do you

Alice Springs now?

get to go back to Mparntwe/

Above Works of art in the Sussan Group headquarters include Thomas Demand’s Hanami, 2014, UV print on non-woven wallpaper, variable dimensions; and Franz West’s Pouf, 2012, steel, foam, linen & cardboard.

Right (Left to right) William Kentridge’s Cartographer, 1997, Charcoal, gouache and pastel on paper; and Ubu, 1997, charcoal, pastel, dry pigment & gouache on paper.

All photos Ben Wrigley.

Above Hetti Perkins with her father, Charles, in 1992.

Photograph: Scott Campbell/Newspix © News Ltd/Newspix.

Below Charles Perkins holding baby Hetti with his mother, Hetty (left), and wife, Eileen (right), at his University of Sydney graduation in 1966. © News Ltd/Newspix.

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Hetti Perkins (centre) with her children, from left: Tyson, Madeleine, Lille and Thea. Photograph by and © Hibiscus Films.

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“I feel I’m more of a cultural activist than a curator, and that’s definitely something that I have inherited. It’s just my life experience that all we do, we do for our people.”

HETTI PERKINS

HP I was

there at the end of 2020 with my sister and my children. But I don’t get back as often as I’d like to, particularly now because of COVID-19 travel restrictions.

One of the wonderful things is that the kids have found their own way back. Whether it’s through environmental activism, through filmmaking, through participating in those ceremony things or as an artist. I think my parental model is a bit like Dad’s – they come with me everywhere, they participate in these conversations and are around all sorts of different people, but they have found their own paths – Tyson is a filmmaker, Thea is an artist, Lille works in conservation and Maddy is an actor. I think they’re quite fortunate – being black, being Australian, but also being part of this beautiful creative community.

ST From a

personal perspective, how does it feel that you’re now creating this Triennial at the National Gallery? It must be quite moving, coming full circle from your upbringing in Kamberri/Canberra and all the history you’ve had as a curator to this moment.

HP I

was really excited to have been approached

by Nick [Mitzevich, Director] to work here, because I really loved his role in [Indigenous art festival] Tarnanthi, and his engagement and progressive agenda. And that’s, in theory, even more of a difficult agenda to promote when the Gallery is so close to Parliament House.

So it’s a real privilege for me. I see this as a very ambitious and unpredictable Triennial. Having grown up in Kamberri/Canberra, I felt it was a very artificial place, and your instinct is to move away and do your own thing and get out there in the world. But in working on this Triennial and working with Dr Aunty Matilda and Paul House and others, I’ve really started to gain a new appreciation for this Country.

ST What you are doing

is also really important because one of the visions of the National Gallery is to put First Nations first, and the Gallery has the biggest collection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art in the world. How do you feel now being part of that?

HP One of the things that I hope this Triennial

will do is really encourage the participation of our community, the local mob and people. It’s really important to engage the local mob and neighbouring communities, such as the Walgalu and Wiradjuri.

I think institutions in Australia struggle with making our people feel that these are culturally safe spaces for them, and that they have agency within those spaces. That’s something I feel that is really important for the Triennial – to encourage that and to show here at the National Gallery that we’re not just the producers of incredible work, but also the audience.

—S ophie Tedmanson is the Henry Dalrymple Chief Content Officer and Editor of Artonview.

But, like what I said about Dad being an instrument, I also feel like I am being a member of my community and that I’ve taken that responsibility to do the best I can, to get these other voices out in the world, because they’re very important messages for all of us that everyone needs to hear. I think there’s a level of courage that artists have, and I really admire that level of vulnerability; the artists are the ones who are really putting themselves on the line.

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Partnerships

Leading the way

Above Wesfarmers Indigenous Arts Leadership Program participants, including Elder-in-residence Aunty Mary Atkinson, attended workshops on site at the National Gallery including a tour of the Conservation department.

Left The National Gallery’s Ian R.T. Colless and Krystal Hurst, Worimi people, viewing Christopher Pease, Minang/ Wardandi/Ballardong/Nyoongar peoples, Souvenir, 2016, National Gallery of Australia, Purchased 2019, © the artist.

Opposite The Wiradjuri Message Stick used by Elder Aunty Isabel Reid during the Residential One handover ceremony in Wagga Wagga.

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The National Gallery of Australia’s Indigenous Arts Leadership Program, supported by Wesfarmers Arts, helps teach First Nations arts workers how to combine their custodial learnings with contemporary leadership. This year it was given a reboot, reports IAN R.T. COLLESS, Dharabuladh/Therabluat clan of the Gundungurra people.

For Juanita Kelly-Mundine, West Bundjalung people, the difference between Indigenous and non-Indigenous leadership lies in the ability to be a good listener.

“One of the things I love most about leadership within our communities is the appreciation for young people and a real emphasis on nurturing people coming up, whether it be in the arts or in any space within community,” she says. “It’s this incredible capacity for our Elders to teach us so much but also be exceptional listeners. Indigenous leadership is really, really good at elevating and amplifying the voices of young people.”

Juanita was speaking at the 2021 National Gallery of Australia Indigenous Arts Leadership Program, supported by Wesfarmers Arts, where she joined fellow alumnus and Wiradjuri man Nathan Sentance as a Mentor for this year’s program.

Since the program’s inception in 2008, it has seen more than 100 graduates and continues to evolve and play a key role in the development of Indigenous professionals within the arts sector.

The program was suspended in 2020 due to the pandemic, however a make-up program was delivered across June and July this year. And it was a program with a difference: in response to feedback from alumni, this year’s schedule was designed to provide a greater diversity of leadership experiences, with a particular focus on off-site and on-Country cultural development. The program was offered in two week-long residentials: the first off-site working with Wiradjuri Elders and community members in Wagga Wagga in June, and the second on Ngambri/Ngunnawal Country onsite in at the National Gallery in Kamberri/Canberra July.

For the first time the program included an Elder-in-residence, Wiradjuri/Ngunnawal Aunty Mary Atkinson. Aunty Mary provided guidance and advice to participants as well as a vital link to the local Wiradjuri community. Together with the presence of a male and female mentor, the inclusion of an Elder-in-residence built a space of cultural informed space for participants from diverse backgrounds and experiences.

The first residential in Wagga Wagga was opened with an official Wiradjuri Message Stick handover ceremony by Elder Aunty Isabel Reid, an advocate for the Stolen Generation who is the 2021 NSW Senior Australian of the Year. Other community-led cultural activities included a cultural tour with Uncle James Ingram to significant Wiradjuri sites, weaving workshops with Aunty Lorraine Tye and Aunty Joyce Hampton, Wiradjuri language and singing lessons with Aunty Elaine P. Lomas, and community ‘cuppas’ hosted by Aunty Cheryl Penrith with members of the Wiradjuri Community, including artist Lorraine Connelly-Northey.

According to Juanita, appreciating diversity is an important trait she has learnt from Elders.

“As Indigenous people we’ve gone through so many struggles and there’s been so many challenges thrown our way, and our old people have had to work so hard in order to give us the opportunities that we have now,” she said.

“They don’t care what your interests are or what your sexuality is, or how you identify with your gender. They just want us to have every opportunity that they fought so hard for us to get.

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Wesfarmers Indigenous Arts Leadership Program mentors Juanita Kelly-Mundine (left) and Nathan Sentance.

It is about everyone being able to express their indigeneity the way that they feel that they should. Culturally, we’ve always been those sorts of people since before colonisation – we’ve always nurtured our unique mob, no matter what that might be, whether it be a skill or an identity. I think our old people want nothing more than for us to thrive and to be happy and fulfilled in ourselves, in whatever way that looks.”

Several workshops and presentations were held featuring alumni Wesley Shaw, Dharawal/Ngarigo peoples, Coby Edgar, Larrakia/Jingili/Filipino/English peoples, Tahjee Moar, Meriam/ Barkindji/Malyangapa peoples, Aleshia Lonsdale, Wiradjuri people, and Aidan Hartshorn, Walgalu/Wiradjuri peoples, who is now the Wesfarmers Assistant Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, at the National Gallery and an integral member of the curatorial team of the Ceremony exhibition.

The second residential was delivered at the National Gallery using a hybrid online/onsite model. With lockdown of the Gadigal Country/Sydney area, Sydney-based participants attended the program virtually using livestream technology.

Following overwhelming support for the Elder-in-Residence model in Wagga Wagga, Aunty Mary Atkinson continued her leadership role by joining the participants in Kamberri/ Canberra. Aunty Mary’s cultural ties helped cultivate strong community engagement across both Residentials.

While in Kamberri/Canberra, participants also connected with Ngambri/Ngunnawal Traditional Custodian Paul Girrawah House for local on-Country learning, including a cultural orientation and history of the area on which the National Gallery stands, insights into his project for the Ceremony exhibition, and a Welcome to Country and smoking ceremony in the Sculpture Garden. Highlights of the second residential included presentations by Council member Terri Janke, Wuthathi/Meriam peoples, about Indigenous leadership in the arts; tours of National Gallery displays with First Nations staff

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including Kelli Cole, Warumungu/Luritja peoples, Curator, Special Projects, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art; insights into the upcoming Ceremony exhibition with curator Hetti Perkins, Arrernte/Kalkadoon peoples; decolonisation and racial literacy workshops led by curator, academic and Worimi woman Genevieve Grieves; a presentation on The Aboriginal Memorial and cultural leadership with curator and Bundjalung man Djon Mundine OAM; attending Bangarra Dance Theatre’s SandSong: Stories from the Great Sandy Desert; and a series of professional development workshops by Gallery staff.

The program culminated in a graduation ceremony held in the Gallery and virtually for Gadigal Country/Sydney participants.

For Nathan Sentance, a highlight of this year’s program was being on Country in Residential One, because “it really centres and grounds you before you start”.

“A lot of us are coming from organisations and we sometimes forget what’s important, and I think you need that grounding before we can even begin,” he said. “So it was incredibly valuable to be by the [Murrumbidgee] River before we even started having the really deep discussions.

“As Uncle James Ingram said: ‘We’re still here and we’re not going anywhere.’ I love that sentiment. I like being able to set our presence wherever we are. So, we’re in the arts and culture sector, but making sure we’re visible, we’re represented, our histories are always being told, because we’re not going anywhere. And some of us had to overcome incredible obstacles to be here. But we’re not going anywhere and that makes me really proud to be part of this group, learning from one another.

“I’m always proud to be a Wiradjuri man, but I’m also proud to be an Aboriginal cultural and arts worker and I’m proud to be part of this program, because it does incredible things.”

— Ian R. T. Colless, Dharabuladh/Therabluat clan of the Gundungurra people, is the Wesfarmers Indigenous Arts Leadership Coordinator, Indigenous Engagement.

Partnerships

Strategic Partners

Indigenous Art Partner

Presenting Partner

Contemporary Art Partner

Touring Partners

Major Partners

Supporting Partners

Media Partners

Cultural Partner

Promotional Partners

Corporate Members

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Donors

The National Gallery acknowledges and thanks supporters of the 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony Major Patrons Suzanne Maple-Brown and Anthony Maple-Brown National Gallery of Australia Foundation Supporting Patron David Paul Exhibition Patrons Kerry Gardner AM and Andrew Myer AM Phillip Keir and Sarah Benjamin through the Keir Foundation Pamela Pearce and Wally Patterson through the Patterson Pearce Foundation Annabel Myer and Rupert Myer AO through the Aranday Foundation Commissioning Patrons Sue Dyer and Dr Steve Dyer American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia with the generous assistance of Geoffrey Pack and Leigh Pack Penelope Seidler AM Ray Wilson OAM Contributors Frances Adamson AC and Rod Bunten Santo Cilauro and Morena Buffon Malcolm Crompton and Heather Crompton Karina Harris and Neil Hobbs Robert Hawes Robert Meller and Helena Clark Suzannah Plowman Susan Robertson and Alan Robertson John Sharpe and Claire Armstrong The Tall Foundation Mandy Thomas-Westende Anthony Waldegrave-Knight and Beverly Waldegrave-Knight

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Annual Appeal Doris Acoymo Lenore Adamson Robert Aernout Peter Alabaster and Tricia Rees Allen Family Foundation Shirley Allen Venise Alstergren American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia with the generous assistance of Dr Helen Jessup Dr Marion Amies Cynthia Anderson Chris Antico Gil Appleton Isabelle Arnaud and Gordon Brysland Dr Dennis Arnold Edward Ashmore Simonetta Astolfi Judith Avery Dr Marie-Louise Ayres Dr Lynne Badger Anna-Rosa Baker Sheryl Ballesty Patrick Barrett and Margaret Barrett Vivienne Binns OAM Andrew Bone Dr Ainette Boothroyd Margaret Bourke Charles Bowden Sarah Bradley Sarah Brasch Francis Breen Charles Brewer C Bridge Lena Britton Howard Brown and Jennifer Brown Martin Browne Sue Buckingham Rosie Bunton Tim Burmeister and Karen McVicker Elizabeth Burrell Dr Julia Byford Annette Byron Jill Caldwell and Richard Caldwell Lucy Caldwell Dorothy Cameron Deborah Carroll and James Carroll Dr Diana Carroll Jane Carver Marguerite Castello Helen Catchatoor Catherine Centre Jillian Christie Fran Clark Joan Clarke and Joseph Clarke Wendy E Cobcroft

Antony Coles The Sargeson family Jenni Colwill and Bruce Bowden Angela Compton and John Compton Philip Constable and Mary Constable Graham Cooke John Cooper and Cathy Chin Sylvia Corby and Robert Hurst Ann Cork Jim Cousins AO and Libby Cousins Heidi Couvée Virginia Coventry Janet Crane Ann Crewe Patrick Crone Nicholas Cumpston Charles Curran AC and Eva Curran Mary Curtis and Richard Mann Maria Magda Damo Coles Danziger Foundation Rowena Davey and Alan Davey Anne De Salis Ted Delofski and Irene Delofski Susan Devic Marianne Doczi Jim Donaldson Shaun Duffy and Susan Duffy Alison Easey Naomi Elias Roz Elliott Stephen Ellis Kathryn Eyles D Farrant Emer Prof Norman Feather AM Penella Fesq Dianne Finnegan and Dr Terry Finnegan Cheryllee Flanagan Richard Flanagan Bruce Flood Barbara Flynn Mary Foley Louise Francis Andrew Freeman FACS Margaret Frisch Carmen Galan Kathy Gelding David George and Annita George Liz Gibson Dr Robin Gibson Julian Goldenberg and Neta Saint Sally Goodspeed June Gordon Ross Gough Gillian Gould and Dr Hugh Smith Patrick Gourley and Diana Gourley Jeremy Grainger Richard Granger

and Kacy Grainger Dr Elizabeth Grant AM Dr Anne Gray Lynnere Gray Pauline Griffin AM Karen Groeneveld and Peter Groeneveld Jennifer Hampton Yvonne Harrington Glenys Harris and Donald Harris Ian Hawke Warwick Hemsley AO Avril Hetherington Sue Hewitt Catherine Hey Frank Hicks Colin Hill and Linda Hill Russell Hill Meredith Hinchliffe Rosemary Hirst Janet Ho Jennifer Hotop Diana Houstone Margaret Hughes Mark Hughes Claudia Hyles OAM Victoria Hynes Dr Anthea Hyslop Cathryn Ingram and Russell Ingram John Jackson and Ros Jackson Rachael Jackson Chennupati Jagadish and Vidya Jagadish Gary James Dr Victoria Jennings Mike Johnston Mariane Judd Penelope Jurkiewicz and Waldemar Jurkiewicz Carolyn Kay and Simon Swaney Sara Kelly Tamsin Kemp Pamela Kenny Elizabeth Kentwell Ilse King Peter King Sharee Kinnaird and John Forbes Krysia Kitch and David Riggs Naomi Landau Robyn Law George Lawrence Viv Laynne Thomas Leffers and Corrie Leffers Andy Leigh Dr Elyssebeth Leigh Kay Lenehan and Geoff Lenehan Susan Levy Walter Frank Lewincamp and Barbara Lewincamp Gary Lindquist

Annette Lock Elizabeth Loftus Kaet Lovell and David McKay Liz Lynch and Mike Lynch Mary-Lou Lyon Michael Lyons Catherine Mahar Judith Manning Graeme Marshall and Dr Walter Ong Julie Matthews Dr Wolf Mayer and Veronica Mayer Robyn McAdam Vicky McCalman Robert McColl Christine McCormack and Jacqueline McCormack Patricia McCullough Rob McGauran Simon McGill Robyn McKay Yvonne McKeahnie Ingrid McKenzie Audrey McKibbin Virginia McLeod and Robert Bleeker Ralph Melano Fiona Meller Augusta Miller Patrick Moody Andrew Moorhead Louise Moran Jane Morrison Prof Ingrid Moses AO and Reverend Dr John Moses Frances Muecke Joananne Mulholland and David Rivers Janet Munro Bianca Murphy Geoffrey Murray-Prior and Gillian Murray-Prior Shanthini Naidoo Donald Nairn Kristen Nasternak Marion Newman Liz Nield OAM Heather Noakes Bede North Dr David Nott and Caroline Nott Paul O’Neill Heather Oakeshott and Matt Oakeshott John Oliver and Libby Oliver Kathy Olsen Cameron Ong Graham Ormsby Dr Milton Edgeworth Osborne AM Kathryn Ovington Óscar Pampín Cabanas

Rita Parker and Michael Parker Linda Pascal Dr Elisabeth Patz John Payne Michael Pennisi Lara Perasso and Arne Schimmelfeder Jonathan Persse Kerry Petherbridge Judy Pettiford and Robert Pettiford Andrew Phelan AM and Monica Phelan John Pilbeam Marylou Pooley and Dr Peter Pedersen Dr Margaret Potts Julia Pratt and Anthony Pratt Dr Michael Priest Anne Prins Lynette Re Anne Reese and David Reese Dr Elizabeth Reid AO Howard Reid The Right Hon Margaret Reid AO Ralph Renard and Ruth Renard Dr Maxine Rochester Arjen Romeyn Alan Rose AO and Helen Rose Susan Ross Peter Rossiter and Linda Rossiter Jennifer Rowland Gabriella Roy Karen Royters Rosalie Ryan Patricia Sabine OAM Bridget Sack Eileen Sadler Raoul Salpeter and Ros Mandelberg Kate Sandles Sally Saunders Fiona Sawyers and Simon Murmane Ann Schavemaker Rebecca Scott Jennifer Sebire Douglas Senyard Bernard Shafer Gaye Shanahan Emer Prof Dr Robert Shanks and Josephine Shanks Lynette Shelley Rosamond Shepherd Kerry Silcock Marian Simpson D’Arcy Slater Foundation Kate Smith Dr Kim Snepvangers Irene Sniatynskyj Dr Sally Sojan Ian Spilsted

Adam Stankevicius David Stanley and Anne Stanley Maisy Stapleton David Star Helene Stead Shaun Stephens Dr Kate Stewart Helen Stone Kathryn Strasser Melinda Tarrant and Lauren Lennon Prof Ken Taylor AM and Maggie Taylor Victoria Taylor Kerren Thorsen Helen Topor Dr Noel Tovey AM John Trotter and Therese Trotter Deirdre Turner Diane Turner Trent Twomey and Georgina Twomey Helen Unwin Astrida Upitis Ioana Vakaci Chris van Reyk Laurelle Vingoe and Stuart Durrell-Potter Maryanne Voyazis, Fred Smith and Olympia Smith Deb Wadeson Anthony Waide and Robyn Knight Clare Wall Linda Ward Margaret Ward Ingrid Waters Wendy Webb Emma Went Adrienna Westman Chris Westworth Murrelia Wheatley Hilary White Barbara Whitlock Jan Whyte and Gary Whyte Emer Prof David Williams and the late Margaret Williams Alexandra Wedutenko James Willis Peter Willis Zandra Wilson Peter Wise Peter Witheridge Daniel Wong Robert Woodcock Michael Woods Chris Wright Jennifer Yeats and Brett Yeats Julie Yeend and Dr Grant Collins and 33 donors who wish to remain anonymous

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The National Gallery acknowledges the support of all donors and recognises here the donations made between April and June 2021.

Art and Dementia Prudence Macleod and Alasdair Macleod Lansdowne Foundation Australian Art Ben Quilty Australian Artists Film Fund Tony Oxley OAM and Roslyn Oxley OAM Australian Prints Margaret Collerton and Helen Creagh in memory of Muriel Shaw Supporters of a Southern Highlands Regional Gallery Cézanne Watercolour and Drawing Fund Debra Askew Mary Boyd Turner Susan Doenau and Roger Doenau Greg Hammond Dr Murray Sandland Felicity Tepper Alan Wyburn Conservation Jacqueline Anderson Debra Askew Emer Prof Jeff Bennett and Ngaire Bennett Rebekah Griffiths Dr Ian McCay Janet McDonald Contemporary Art Patricia Piccinini Donations to support the National Gallery De Lambert Largesse Foundation Michael Gannon and Helen Gannon Ruth Lambert and Steve Lambert Suzanne Maple-Brown and Anthony Maple-Brown Maria Athanassenas John Bell Francis Breen Deborah Carroll and James Carroll Catherine Centre Stephanie Cole Shaun Duffy and Susan Duffy Richard Flanagan Bruce Flood Diane Gibbons The Walker family Robert Hawes Assoc Prof Lybus Hillman Dr Anthea Hyslop Carolyn Kay and Simon Swaney Elizabeth Loftus Ralph Melano

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Kristen Nasternak Kathy Olsen Cameron Ong Glenda Robinson Ashlie Smith Trent Twomey and Georgina Twomey Adrienna Westman Barbara Whitlock Jennifer Yeats Major Patrons: Jeffrey Smart Roslyn Packer AC Exhibition Patrons: Jeffrey Smart Ermes De Zan Sue Maple-Brown AM Dr Michael Martin and Elizabeth Popovski Exhibition Supporters: Jeffrey Smart Paul Taylor and Susan Taylor Kenneth Tyler Print Fund American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia with the generous assistance Kenneth Tyler AO and the late Marabeth Cohen-Tyler Know My Name Vicki Brown Lisa Chung AM and Philip Howard Wendy E Cobcroft Maria Magda Damo Kate Dixon Julia Ermert Assoc Prof Lybus Hillman Stuart Lindenmayer Karen McVicker Michael Pennisi Amanda Rowell Maggie Shapley Niek Van Vucht Laurelle Vingoe and Stuart Durrell-Potter Liz Wilson Deborah Winkler Robert and Eugenie Bell Decorative Arts and Design Fund Dr Eugenie Keefer Bell FRAIA Pamela Kenny Sculpture Garden Fund Judy Rogers and Andrew Rogers Tim Fairfax Fund for Learning and Digital Timothy Fairfax AC Treasure a Textile Dr Maxine Rochester

Major Patrons of the Gala Fund 2021 Robyn Burke and Graham Burke AO Michael Gannon and Helen Gannon Gala Fund 2021 Geoffrey Ainsworth AM Antoinette Albert Philip Bacon AO Tony Berg AM and Carol Berg Bowness Family Foundation Andrew Buchanan PSM and Kate Buchanan Julian Burt and Alexandra Burt Robert Cadona Andrew Cameron AM and Cathy Cameron Terry Campbell AO and Christine Campbell Michel-Henri Carriol AM and Julie Carriol OAM Maurice Cashmere Helen Cook James Darling AM and Lesley Forwood Marilyn Darling AC Johnathan Efkarpidis and Agapy Efkarpidis Richard Flanagan Paula Fox AO and Lindsay Fox AC Paul Lindwall and Dr Joanne Frederiksen Kerry Gardner AM and Andrew Myer AM Julian Goldenberg and Neta Saint Ginny Green and Leslie Green Peter Hack Karina Harris and Neil Hobbs Jane Hayman and Simon Hayman Bill Hayward and Alison Hayward Sue Hewitt John Hindmarsh AM and Rosanna Hindmarsh OAM Jo Horgan and Peter Wetenhall Nikos Kalogeropoulos and Sandra Kalogeropoulos Tony Lewis and Helen Lewis Jane Hansen AO and Paul Little AO Dr Andrew Lu AM and Dr Geoffrey Lancaster AM Kate Madison Sue Maple-Brown AM Suzanne Maple-Brown and Anthony Maple-Brown Dr Michael Martin and Elizabeth Popovski Fiona Martin-Weber and Tom Hayward Molonglo Nicholas Moore and Helen Moore Baillieu Myer AC and Sarah Myer Dr Judith Neilson AM

Kerr Neilson Geoffrey Pack and Leigh Pack Roslyn Packer AC Elizabeth Pakchung Bruce Parncutt AO Pamela Pearce and Wally Patterson through the Patterson Pearce Foundation Dr Dick Quan Jacqui Scheinberg and Richard Scheinberg Penelope Seidler AM David Shannon and Daniela Shannon Gary Singer and Geoffrey Smith Diane Smith-Gander AO Ezekiel Solomon AM Ryan Stokes AO and Claire Stokes Sullivan Strumpf Fine Art Susan Thomas Daniel Tobin Urban Art Projects Rhonda White AO Sally White OAM and Geoffrey White OAM Lyn Williams AM Ray Wilson OAM and 2 donors who wish to remain anonymous

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His films are autobiographical, often explaining how he relates to the world through his use of YSL, but also serve as something of a living document of the language that celebrates its continued existence through its contemporary application by young Yolŋu people.

An important on-site project by Dr Aunty Matilda House and Paul Girrawah House will see the National Gallery’s Sculpture Garden grow cultural roots into local Ngambri and Ngunnawal Country through murruwaygu, the process of ceremonially or ritually scarring trees. Murruwaygu is grounded in an understanding of place, practice and language, and the interdependencies of these elements.

Paul has conveyed that murruwaygu is the Wiradjuri word/ concept used to describe incisions, which can be understood as the marks or tracks of a travelling object. The term can also be used to describe the following of a path, or to trace the path of those who have come before.

out of sight of the broader public, away from metropolitan Kamberri/Canberra. In recent years Paul has begun a process of removing sheets of bark from eucalypts in the Parliamentary Triangle area and carving designs into the scars to assert his sovereign right to continue his traditional practices on his traditional lands. Here, Paul makes visible the continued existence of Ngambri and Ngunnawal people, culture and art within the metropolitan areas of the national capital and speaks to the truth that all land, whether urban, regional or remote, is Aboriginal land.

We are privileged to be able to support Dr Aunty Matilda and Paul in bringing their artistic and cultural practices to our space, truly acknowledging the thousands of years of artistic practices that have existed on the site of the National Gallery and ensuring these marks will be seen, understood and valued for many years to come.

Kamberri/Canberra is home to many historic scar trees, found in almost all areas of undeveloped bushland, which stand in evidence of the existence of Ngambri and Ngunnawal peoples within these spaces who have taken resources from trees in sheets of bark to make coolamons, canoes or shields.

Throughout colonial-settler history, Ngambri and Ngunnawal people have continued this practice but, for the most part,

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Tarnanthi: Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art 15 Oct 2021 – 30 Jan 2022

Tarnanthi Art Fair 15–17 Oct 2021

Shedding new light on Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander art.

AGSA Kaurna yartangka yuwanthi. AGSA stands on Kaurna land. @tarnanthi #tarnanthi agsa.sa.gov.au Adelaide

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qantas.com/100

CEL EBR AT ING

Y E A R S A ND REC OGNISING 6 5,000

‘Wirriyarra’ Qantas uniform textile artwork reproduced with permission of Balarinji