Tjukuritja Kunpu Kanyitjaku – Keeping Stories Strong 

Michael Reid Southern Highlands will soon present Tjukuritja Kunpu Kanyitjaku – Keeping Stories Strong, an expansive exhibition bringing together three leading painters from Iwantja Arts, the Indigenous-owned and -governed art centre at Indulkana on the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. Presenting extraordinary new works by Maringka Burton, Emily Cullinan and Raylene Walatinna, the exhibition celebrates three of the most exciting and accomplished creative voices within the exuberant movement in First Nations painting that has flourished at Iwantja and brought its artists global acclaim.

“Iwantja is an engine room of Australian art – a small desert community producing work of national consequence. Some art centres follow the market; Iwantja drives it,” writes our galleries’ chairman and director, Michael Reid OAM. “Walatinna, Cullinan and Burton paint with the boldness that has made Iwantja one of the most watched and collected art making communities in the country. You don’t need to know anything about collecting First Nations art to feel that. The colour, the wit, the sheer confidence of these paintings speak for themselves.” Now available to preview by request ahead of next week’s opening, Tjukuritja Kunpu Kanyitjaku arrives at a moment of renewed national attention for Iwantja artists, coinciding with the National Gallery of Australia’s landmark exhibition Ngura Puḻka – Epic Country, where Walatinna and Burton are both represented.

“The energy of an art centre is hard to describe,” writes curator Hannah Presley in the introduction to the widely celebrated 2022 publication IWANTJA, which devotes extensive chapters to each of the three artists featured in Tjukuritja Kunpu Kanyitjaku. “They buzz with the unexpected activity of an art studio, but there is also another layer to these spaces as sites of cultural continuation. Art making is one of the ways our Elders have shared cultural stories that have informed generations of painters, and art has been a useful tool for reinforcing a strong sense of identity and belonging.” That spirit of cultural continuity is felt throughout Tjukuritja Kunpu Kanyitjaku, whose title speaks directly to the enduring responsibility of keeping Tjukurpa – the ancestral stories, knowledge systems and cultural foundations that connect Aṉangu people to Country – strong across generations.

Among the exhibition’s three artists, Emily Cullinan stands as one of Iwantja’s most senior painters, with her vibrant, rhythmically animated canvases drawing on childhood memories of travelling vast distances across the APY Lands with her family while living according to Aṉangu tradition. “We have really good memories from those days,” says Cullinan, a name visitors to Michael Reid Southern Highlands will know from a succession of warmly received group showings at our Berrima gallery.

Raylene Walatinna has developed a distinctive visual language that honours Country while extending a remarkable artistic lineage. She is the daughter and frequent collaborator of acclaimed artist, Iwantja director and, as of this year, four-time Wynne Prize finalist Betty Chimney, and through their collaborative practice, the two artists continue the custom of older women passing cultural knowledge to younger generations. “My mum has always been my closest friend. I learnt how to paint from her,” says Walatinna. “Over time, I’ve developed my own way of working too.” The artists’ monumental 2022 painting Nganampa Ngura – Our Country is now soaring almost three metres above the NGA exhibition space as a spectacular centrepiece of the long-awaited, artist-led Ngura Puḻka exhibition and also features prominently in the NGA’s accompanying publication.

Completing the trio of Iwantja talents joining forces for Tjukuritja Kunpu Kanyitjaku is revered Pitjantjatjara artist and ngangkari (traditional healer) Maringka Burton, who is also represented in the NGA show with a sprawling work she co-created with her friend, fellow Iwantja artist and frequent collaborator Betty Muffler. “We get on really well in all our work, both as ngangkari and now, when we are working on our paintings together,” says Burton, whose luminous compositions are informed by healing, memory and her enduring connection to her mother’s Country. “Betty and I, we go on spiritual journeys called marali, our spirits going to heal. We go at night to give treatments to the sick and we come back to ourselves.”

While distinct in their painterly approaches and perspectives, Burton, Cullinan and Walatinna are united by a shared commitment to carrying Tjukurpa forward through painting. Their works reveal the extraordinary vitality of a living cultural tradition in which memory, knowledge and responsibility are passed from one generation to the next. At a moment of historic national attention for the artists of Iwantja and the wider APY Lands, Michael Reid Southern Highlands is proud to bring these three leading artists together in Tjukuritja Kunpu Kanyitjaku – Keeping Stories Strong.

To request a preview and priority access, please email willkollmorgen@michaelreid.com.au