This weekend, the fourth edition of the Tarnanthi Festival of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Art opens across multiple Adelaide venues. The Festival – with its signature exhibition presented by the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) – has quickly garnered a reputation for long-track projects and new commissions that dig deep into the histories, the lore and the politics of art being produced on Country.
Led by Artistic Director Nici Cumpston, AGSA’s Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, this year’s Tarnanthi program continues to be ambitious.
Many of the projects celebrate innovation, such as Darrell Sibosado’s large-scale steel sculptural reimaginings of pearl-shell carving designs from the Kimberley coast and the imposing sculptural linocuts by Brian Robinson; Nongirrnga Marawili’s bark paintings that use recycled printer toner cartridges and Gunybi Ganambarr’s etched aluminium ‘paintings’; Ryan Presley’s Blood Money paintings, which reimagine Australia’s currency, and the Bunha-bunhanga project – the first presentation through visual art of research into pre-colonial land use.
But it is an exhibition in AGSA’s downstairs galleries, Gurruṯu, that in many ways underlies the whole foundation of Tarnanthi this year. And while it unpacks a philosophy of law and life fused within Yolŋu culture from North East Arnhem Land (NT), it is all embracing as a concept – offering a pathway for understanding contemporary relationships in our increasingly diverse world.
‘Art, like gurruṯu, can help us to make sense of everything,’ explain Cumpston and AGSA Assistant Director Lisa Slade in their catalogue introduction.
What is gurruṯu?
Whether making a bark larrakitj (memorial pole) in remote Arnhem land from harvested bark or standing in front of a painting in one of our state galleries, the message is that all things are connected.
Colloquially we talk about the spiritually inherent within Aboriginal art. Sometimes it’s explained in the shimmer of a mark, or secret stories held within the artworks themselves. Gurruṯu is that interconnected system of things that is palpable when encountered – regardless of white or black, city or remote, law or life.
It is far more than a network of kinship and clans; of tribal homelands, bloodlines and stories. Award winning bark painter and Yolŋu elder, Djambawa Marawili puts it simply: ‘All living things have a gurruṯu.’
What is interesting about this philosophy is that it allows a place for “whitefellas” to bridge understanding, and offers an interesting way to move forward in how we can engage with Aboriginal art in our galleries, and in exhibitions.
The Yin and Yang of Aboriginal art
Sitting on the beach at Nhulunbuy (NT) as dusk settled in, artist Wukun Waṉambi told ArtsHub: ‘It’s like yin and yang. Everything in the world is either Dhuwa or Yirritja – every plant, every place, every clan and every person. We cannot marry someone from the same side, we must always marry the opposite.’
Things need to stay in balance, and in a world that is facing the repercussions of climate change and environmental degradation, this ancient concept of 60,000 years is not so distant from current-day lessons.
Waṉambi continued in the Tarnanthi catalogue: ‘It is a time to move forward rather than go backwards … I want to show Gurka’wuy (Waṉambi’s country) in a different way … what I am trying to do is break down Yolŋu theology.’
For Tarnanthi he will bring together larrakitj and video, taking his signature fish designs off the surface, to swim around the visitor in an immersive floor piece.
Cumpston said of Wukun’s new work: ‘Seeing the installation, and the way that Wukun has wanted the audience to feel immersed in it, I think people will get a real sense of gurruṯu, bringing all these different elements together.’
Read: From bark painting to video: innovation goes bush
Speaking of his totem of fish, Waṉambi draws a connection. ‘Fish are similar to human beings – big travels … It’s like you and me, when we go through the internet, we look for our destinies, to find our great-great-great- grandfathers and grandmothers or we go to the museum and we look around for them.’
He added: ‘It is important to show our culture to the Balanda [non-Yolŋu] world. And we are showing in a modern way a very old way of doing it. But art only goes one way to understanding. Museum directors, curators and politicians must come down to the grassroots level to learn from the Yolŋu.’
Another key video work on show, Gurruṯu’mi Mala by emerging artist Gutiŋarra Yunupiŋu, communicates the physical connections between people and all things using Yolŋu sign language. Completing the trilogy is a video matrix that maps gurruṯu by artist and filmmaker Ishmael Marika, and the team at The Mulka Project in Yirrkala.
In all three examples technology is being used to bring these ancient lessons alive, and to extend them in order to share understandings with new audiences.
In the catalogue essay Marika described it thus: ‘The Mulka Project got the idea to show outsiders how people are connected here and the two old ladies (Ranydjupi Yunupiŋu and Bengitj Munuŋgurr) sat down with Bec (Charlesworth) to map the gurruṯu. This was the new way which we wanted to educate the outside world and show them that everybody was connected and that everybody is family’.
He continued that in understanding gurruṯu is the understanding that ‘there are no strangers’.
Speaking with curator Nici Cumpston, while visiting Marika and The Mulka Project, she told ArtsHub: ‘I feel like it is so deeply ingrained in family structures that it is always going to come through the works of art.’
That systemic passing on of information from generation to generation is now extended to the public, through these new commissioned works made for the museum environment.
‘It is giving us a way in,’ said Cumpston. ‘I believe this is their way of being able to speak to the general public their concerns around issues and what is happening. If feel like it is offering a fresh platform to talk.’
Tarnanthi is presented across the Art Gallery of South Australia and other city-wide Adelaide venues from 18 October 2019 – 27 January 2020.
TARNANTHI is presented in partnership with BHP and with support from the Government of South Australia.
The writer travelled to Yirrkala as a guest of the Art Gallery of South Australia.
