Heart Lands - Iwantja Artists

The exhibition Heart Lands presents a fresh vision by twelve traditional artists from Indulkuna in the eastern region of the APY Lands. Their latest paintings show aspects of ancestral country, many under the title of  ‘Remembering Country’.

New elements of finely woven designs by Maringka Burton, Nellie Coulthard, Betty Muffler and Rene Sundown add a new subtlety to this latest exhibition. The artists’ palette uses sun-bleached tones of yellows, pinks and greys to create a sense of this desert landscape. These paintings are extensions of the same vision of Alec Baker, who also uses soft colours to depict a vast open space which he then populates with emu totems and tracks around waterholes, hills and other icons of desert experience.

Tiger Tjanyari and Mary Brumby present a more expressionist vision of their environment, with Tiger using bold geometric shapes and rich colours to create different types of icons for desert living. Mary Brumby overlays thick brush strokes of colour to enliven images of waterholes and surrounding country.

These Yankunytjatjaraand Pitjantjatjara speaking artists, living beside an exposed ridge overlooking Iwantja Creek, where the Ancestral owl Tjurki rested on his Creation journey, are in the Heart Lands of their heritage. For the same reason that the community of Indulkana was built here to accommodate Anangu people, who needed to return to their homelands after years of working away from home on distant cattle stations, these paintings reflect all of their strong concern to be in Heart Lands.