Past events / Exhibitions, Projects

‘Nganana Tjungu – This is Us’ Exhibition

Ended — at Songlines

Ikuntji Artists are excited to present our collaborative exhibition  ‘Nganana Tjungu – This is Us’, which features a series of polaroids and etchings by Ikuntji Artists and photographer Tobias Titz.

The Exhibition will take place at the new Songlines Gallery space, Darwin City from the 30th of July 2022.

About the works:

In 2018 Ikuntji Artists worked with photographer Tobias Titz to create a set of collaborative works, featuring Polaroid portraits with corresponding etchings of our artists.

In a series of workshops, arts workers and artists from Ikuntji Artists worked in the medium of photography with renowned photographer Tobias Titz. Titz guided the artists and arts workers through the process with a particular focus on portraits of the artists. As part of the workshops artists created etchings about their country. The resulting collection of prints is a collaboration of these portraits and the etchings, capturing both the essence of the artists through the portraits, and their story through the etchings. In the etchings, artists responded in different ways, some using texts and others translating their painting style into the thin lines.

The workshops involved over 30 artists and arts workers, ranging from established artists to emerging, male and female of all ages. The workshops invited artists into the image making process by etching depictions of their country in the wet emulsion of the large format Polaroid 665 film negative. The project encouraged self representation, allowing the people in the photographs a voice to accompany their photographic representation.

For many of the younger artists, this was the first time to be working with these mediums and was an exciting and valuable experience. Notably, established artists such as Eunice Napanangka Jack, have worked previously with etching and works on paper. The diversity of style in these collaborative works is striking, though come together as an expression of the history and rich culture of the art centre and the Haasts Bluff community.

This collection comes out of Ikuntji Artists ‘History Project’ that begun in 2017 as a way of re-telling the history of Ikuntji from within. Ikuntji Artists is one of the first Indigenous art centres in the Western Desert created by women for women. This project is about the unheard voices of the Western Desert art movement, aiming at documenting and celebrating the life stories and histories of Ikuntji Artists and the art movement through multimedia and bilingual texts.

Participating Artists

More information

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Date & Time

Start:
End:

Location

Songlines
55 Stuart Highway, Stuart Park NT 0820