Painted Country presents the work of five Australian First Nations artists - Nellie Ngampa Coulthard, Brenda Napaltjarri, Clara Napurrula, Rene Sundown and Adrian Jurra Tjungurrayi.
Drawing upon their rich artistic, cultural, and ancestral knowledge, each artist paints unique depictions of Country, refracted through memory and lived experience. Using restrained colour palettes, the artists each capture the subtle shifts of light, native flora, ancestral stories, and culturally significant sites across the vast desert regions of Western Australia, South Australia, and the Northern Territory.
Presented together, these diverse artistic perspectives and practices converge to reveal a rich and nuanced portrayal and understanding of the Australian desert landscape. Atmospheric and harmonious, these works transcend naturalistic representation, evoking deeper resonances.
Working from Iwantja Arts in South Australia and Papunya Tula Artists in the Northern Territory, the artists uphold and carry forward ancestral and artistic traditions through their practice and deep cultural knowledge.
With special thanks to the Artists; Iwantja Arts, South Australia; Papunya Tula Artists, Northern Territory; and Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne, who partnered with Manningham Art Gallery to curate this major exhibition.
Adrian Jurra Tjungurrayi is an emerging Pintupi artist whose rhythmic, tessellating compositions recall his familial cultural and artistic lineages and herald the bold future of Papunya Tula painting. Tjungurrayi paints Yunala, the name of both a desert flora with an interlacing root network and a significant site on his ancestral Country, expressed in meandering lines and geometric forms. Adrian's soft tonal gradations conjure the salt lakes of his Country, resulting in a highly sophisticated and contemporary aesthetic.
Brenda Napaltjarri is an emerging Pintupi artist from Walungurru (Kintore), in the far west of the Northern Territory, Australia. Napaltjarri’s powerful practice recalls the concentric and inwardly focused energy of her father’s work, the late Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi. Refining her father's practice further, the elegant simplicity of Napaltjarri’s radiating circles emanate a visceral energy, undulating with hypnotic motion.
Clara Napurrula is an emerging Pintupi artist from Walungurru (Kintore), in the far west of the Northern Territory, Australia. Napurrula is recognised for her precision and elegance, painting fields of finely dotted lines that shimmer and surge across the canvas. Napurrula is the daughter of renowned Pintupi artist Wintjiya Napaltjarri (c. 1932 – 2014) a pioneer of the women’s Western Desert art movement. As a second-generation Pintupi artist, Clara Napurrula’s practice serves as an important continuation of the women’s Papunya Tula art movement.
Nellie Ngampa Coulthard paints the landscapes of her childhood, Yankunytjatjara Country near Oodnadatta, South Australia. Coulthard’s paintings are refined in technique and composition, accenting bold pinks, golden browns and burnt oranges and defined by the outstretched linear branches of the Acacia Murrayana Wattle that sit at the heart of her compositions.
Rene Sundown is a senior Yankunytjatjara artist from Indulkana, in far north South Australia. Sundown paints delicate fields of cream and gold that recall the subtle shifts in colour of the Ngura Tali, Sand Dune Country near Erldunda in the Northern Territory where she was raised.
Her refined palette evokes the shifting dunes and sun-warmed grasses of the central desert, intersected with bold linear compositional markers delineating sites of cultural significance.
Image Credit: Nellie Ngampa Coulthard, Tjuntala Ngurangka - Country with Wattle (Acacia Murrayana), 2023, synthetic polymer paint on linen, 152 x 167 cm (detail). Courtsey of The Artist, Iwantja Arts and Alcaston Gallery.