Tennant Creek Brio: Juparnta Ngattu Minjinypa Iconocrisis

The first major survey of Tennant Creek Brio, an artist collective living and working on Warumungu Country. Fusing First Nations cultural traditions, the industrial materiality of the mining industry, and regional and global art influences, the exhibition asserts and reimagines the artists’ cross-cultural identities, drawing upon the haunting wounds of post-contact histories, the renewal and remaking of cultural practices, and the collaborative resilience and audaciously punk attitude of a frontier community.

The group first converged in 2016 when the artists initiated an outreach program at the local men’s centre, Anyinginyi Health Aboriginal Corporation. Juparnta Ngattu Minjinypa Iconocrisis explores The Brio’s practice of reinscribing their experiences, cultural identity and mark making onto salvaged found materials such as oil barrels, car bonnets, solar panels, poker machines, television screens, and geological maps from the abandoned Warrego mine, revealing the deeply personal and complex intergenerational influences that continue to shape and entwine the artists’ lives, identities and future-thinking.

Alongside the presentation of significant works created over almost a decade, the exhibition at ACCA presents an ambitious, industrially-scaled scenographic assemblage that channel’s the power and strength of The Brio’s image-making, centring a pertinent critique on colonial extraction, capitalism, and the subsequent social, cultural and political complexities and negotiations that stem from this.

The Brio’s signature-style mark-making features across a range of painterly, sculptural, installation, video, drawing and performance practices that highlight the cultural power and rebel-rousing attitude of Tennant Creek Brio’s contemporary art practice.

With: Fabian Brown Japaljarri, Lindsay Nelson Jakamarra, Rupert Betheras, Joseph Williams Jangarrayi, Jimmy Frank Juppurla, Clifford Thompson Japaljarri and Marcus Camphoo Kemarre.

Curated by Max Delany, Elyse Goldfinch, Dr Jessica Clark and Dr Shelley McSpedden.