NELLIE STEWART – MINYMA KUTJARA
18.11.2023—
16.12.2023
2023
'A place on the map,' American poet Adrienne Rich once observed, 'is also a place in history'. Nyapari-based artist Nellie Stewart may live in what outsiders perceive to be a remote location – just a tiny dot on the map – but the visual reality of the Minyma Kutjara, the two Ancestral Sisters, that Stewart so expertly captures in her magnificent compositions have secured her a place in Australian, and international, art history.”
— Dr Christine Nicholls
Minyma Kutjara Tjukurpa (Two Women Creation Line) is an epic creation narrative that follows the journey of two sisters who were separated as children when a big wind came and blew the younger sister far away south. The older sister eventually sets out to retrieve her from a distant tribe where she has been raised in the tradition of others, and return her to her own country and family.
On their long journey home, the older sister imparts all the knowledge of the land and creation, performing the associated Inma (sacred dancing) of significant sites throughout their journey. As they approach the Irrunytju area from the south, they throw their wana (digging stick) and it slides along the ground, moving earth as it goes, to form a shallow, water holding depression, known now as Wana Wani.
Nellie’s paintings carry a lightness of being: with soft, exposed brushstrokes evident throughout, as if Nellie literally moved the brush through the same red sand journey the sisters took, leaving her own marks in the depicted landscape as a reflection of the many paths they themselves traversed. But behind the compositions was a serious and measured artist who diligently placed her meaning deep within the paintings.
Nellie Stewart may have unassumingly arrived to painting but this inspiring exhibition is a testament to the colourful and individual legacy she leaves behind.
