Highlights announced for 2017 TARNANTHI

2017 TARNANTHI: Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Artistic Director, Nici Cumpston, yesterday announced the program highlights for the city-wide Festival, which returns to Adelaide this October.

Encompassing a major exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia, an art fair presented at Tandanya, National Aboriginal Cultural Institute and a city-wide festival, TARNANTHI showcases contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art from across the country, providing a platform for artists to share important stories and shed new light on their practise.

In 2017 TARNANTHI will showcase over 1,000 artists at exhibitions at the Art Gallery of South Australia and more than 20 partner venues, and the TARNANTHI Art Fair will feature over 40 art centres and individual artists from across the country.

The Festival’s vision, led by Barkindji artist and curator, Nici Cumpston, encourages new beginnings by providing artists with opportunities to create significant new work and extend the practices that they have been developing in studios, art centres, institutions and communities.

Drawing on artists from across the nation, this year’s Festival will have a focus on the seven art centres that span the South Australian Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands.

“These artists are embodying the essence of breaking new ground with their art making. Through years of experience and presenting their work across the country, they are now driving their own practise to ambitious new levels. TARNANTHI presents an opportunity to listen to where the artists want to take their ideas and then support them to achieve their vision,” said Ms Cumpston.

Artists from Ernabella Arts (Pukatja), Tjala Arts (Amata), Mimili Maku Arts (Mimili), Iwantja Arts (Indulkana), Tjungu Palya (Nyapari), Kaltjiti Arts (Fregon) and Ninuku Arts (Kalka) are represented, including the forty-five artists who have come together to work on the monumental APY Lands men’s and women’s collaborative paintings. These two collaborative paintings will be accompanied by Robert Fielding’s black and white photographs portraying the artists involved in the creation of these works.

Suspended from a kulata (spear), Mumu Mike Williams’ paintings on two repurposed canvas mailbags include handwritten statements in Pitjantjatjara about heritage, ownership and custodianship, as well as the conflict between Commonwealth law and Anangu lore.

Meanwhile, senior painter and ceramicist Pepai Jangala Carroll joins fellow Ernabella artist and potter Derek Jungarrayi Thompson for an exhibition titled Mark and Memory, following a recent pilgrimage by the pair to their ancestral homelands in the central Western Desert.

The ongoing sharing of cultural knowledge has formed the basis of the APY Lands men’s collaborative installation Kulata Tjuta (Many Spears).

In this major new work, more than six hundred kulata (spears), made by men from each of the art centres across the APY Lands, will be suspended from the ceiling of the Art Gallery of South Australia above a group of piti (water carriers) made by the women. This large-scale installation depicts the impact of atomic bomb testing in Anangu Lands.

From Alice Springs the artists at Yarrenyty Arltere will showcase Kulila, a group of embroidered soft sculptures which are self-portraits of the artists.

Over in the community of Maningrida, husband and wife artists Bob Burrawal and Lena Yarinkura are creating an immersive, multimedia installation based on real life events. The work details a terrifying encounter Bob had as a young boy with Namorrodo, a malevolent shooting star spirit prevalent in and around the rocky escarpment and river country of central and western Arnhem Land.

From far east Western Australia, NGURRA: Home in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands, presented by the South Australian Museum, is an exhibition that explores the rich concept of Ngurra (home) as expressed by the Ngaanyatjarra people of the Western Desert.

At its heart, TARNANTHI is a series of exhibitions, artists talks, performances and events, showcasing and celebrating contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art.

The full TARNANTHI Festival program will be announced in August 2017. For further information
visit tarnanthi.com.au.