BYU’s Museum of Art hosted an artist panel to commemorate the "Irrititja Kuwarri Tjungu" exhibition on Oct. 10.
Aboriginal artists, Marlene Nampitjina and John West Tjupurrula, flew to Provo, Utah from Australia to discuss their displayed artwork with Museum of Art (MOA) visitors last weekend.
The "Irrititja Kuwarri Tjungu" exhibition, translated to "past and present together," premiered at the MOA on July 18 and will be on display until Dec. 6. The exhibition celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of Nampitjina and Tjuppurrula’s art company, the Papunya Tula Artists.
Visitors flooded into the MOA to mill about the exhibition before the panel began. Though the visitors were free to explore the exhibition as they pleased, a majority of them followed around the artists themselves.
“We fight with art,” Tjuppurrula said to his own crowd in tow.
Both Nampitjina and Tjuppurrula discussed their experiences with their art to help visitors gain a better understanding of indigenous Australian culture.
“It’s an enormous gift for these artists to share their stories with the world,” Henry Skerrit, assistant professor of art history at the University of Virginia, said.
To start off the panel, Professor Skerrit gave a short lecture about the history of Aboriginal art and the Papunya Tula Artists which began in 1972. The art company gained worldwide traction and attention from celebrities such as Steve Martin, Jack Black and Beyoncé.
“There’s no ‘one’ history of the company,” Professor Skerrit said.
Professor Skerrit was joined by Nici Cumpston, the director of the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, in conjunction with Papunya Tula Artists.
“Country is our mother and we all have to look after her. Without nature, we can’t exist,” Cumpston said during her address.
When Nampitjina spoke during the panel, she began with discussing her childhood experience in a traditional Aboriginal space before getting involved with her artwork.
Nampitjina grew up during the time frame of the art company’s infancy — never seeing a white Australian until the 1960s. She traveled through the Australian Bush with her family to settle in Papunya when the Australian government started their assimilation efforts.
“We were walking through the country with nothing,” Nampitjina described.
Nampitjina lived in Papunya, working in a clinic until Papunya Tula Artists moved back out to her ancestral land in the Australian Bush.
“I started painting in 2004, I was always working at that time in a hard place. There were no houses, you had to pump water,” Nampitjina said.
Nampitjina’s artistry was regarded as the start of a new generation of Aboriginal art. Her work was inspired by her spiritual connections to her family and ancestry.
“It’s the painting of my country, like with your hands in the sand. But then you paint instead with a stick,” Nampitjina said.
Nampitjina’s nephew, Tjupurrula, spoke about how his artwork was more so connected to his ancestral land throughout the Bush. He displayed multiple images of landscapes he was inspired by alongside his own art.
“You can see the land is very much like Utah,” Tjupurrula said.
Tjupurrula talked about his family dynamics and the stories his parents would tell about the land they had to leave. These stories inspired him to return to that land and honor his heritage through his art.
“When you grow up, you live your dreams,” Tjupurrula shared towards the end of the panel discussion.
When the panel ended, visitors returned to the exhibition with greater insight on its artwork and the inspiration behind each piece. While Tjupurrula’s art was created mostly for the Aboriginal land, Nampitjina made sure that visitors would be mindful of her family members represented throughout the exhibition.
“You can read their stories. They’re all my countrymen,” Nampitjina said.
Everything Nampitjina shared with the MOA visitors connected back to her immediate and ancestral family and her spiritual connections between them and her art.
“My family is still there in spirit,” Nampitjina said.