By KATH GANNAWAY
HETTI Perkins cast an appreciative eye over the works of John Mawurndjul and the late Galumbu Yunupingu as the final work was hung at Tarrawarra Museum of Art last week.
The 26 works, 13 each, by the pair regarded as two of the most outstanding Indigenous artists of our time, feature in the Earth and Sky exhibition which opened on Sunday.
As curator, Ms Perkins says it’s an exhibition that is very much about the work.
TWMA at Healesville, she said, was the ideal gallery for works that don’t need enhancements.
“This gallery is so vast and very simple,” she said looking down the walls lined on other side with the, as yet, unlit works of Mawurndjul and Yunupingu.
“I wanted this exhibition to be just about the work; not many tricks, just white walls, bare floor, allowing the works to speak,“ she said.
“It feels immersive.
“I really wanted a simple, organic show that would do justice to these individual artists.”
The title of the exhibition refers to the respective subjects of the two artists’ practice.
The paintings of Kuninjku artist Mawurndjul embody the earthly, the terrestrial, and the ancestral realm. His ‘abstract’ bark paintings represent body painting for the sacred Mardayin ceremonies and relate to the landscape and significant sites within his homeland in western Arnhem Land.
Initially inspired by her traditional Gumatj stories of the Pleiades and other constellations, the late Gulumbu Yunupingu painted Garak (the universe) and its stars and galaxies, interpreting these ancestral concepts within the realms of her own imagination.
Ms Perkins said in bringing the work of the two artists together, the exhibition offers a panoptic view of ‘country’ from an Indigenous perspective.
“Both artists engage with and represent the natural world in a highly sophisticated and conceptual aesthetic form,” she said.
“Their work distils the spiritual nature of this engagement in work that resonates with a power that is both ceremonial and celebratory.”
The exhibition is on show until 8 June.
