Jukwarringa (Mud Mussels) painted by Kaye Brown, Raelene Lampuwatu Kerinauia, Janice Pungautiji
Murray and Michelle Woody, 2018, earth pigment on shell. Photographer: Fiona Morrison.
Mulkuṉ Wirrpanda, Matarawatj II, earth pigment on board. Photographer: Fiona Morrison.
Siying Zhou, Suk My Exotic Fingers, 2018, bronze castings, wood panelling, found drawer, rhinestones, turntables. Photographer: Fiona Morrison.
Emma Lupin, Kakadu Plums in Hands, from the photographic series, It’s in our Hands.
Christine Joy Barzaga, Kainan Na, Let’s Eat Until Our Bellies Are Full, 2018, watercolour, ink, pencil on Arches paper, 21 x 32cm. Collection of the artist. Photographed by Fiona Morrison.
The unique food culture of the Northern Territory, and the diversity of artwork being created, inspired Sarah Pirrie to curate We Eat We Are. Currently on tour through Artback NT, the exhibition makes its third stop at the Northern Centre for Contemporary Art.
We Eat We Are explores food as a social interaction— a kind of Joseph Beuysian social sculpture—that brings people together, builds relationships and community, records and continues culture, and, for Pirrie, allows us to explore “relationships we have with our identity.”
The exhibition includes the work of six artists and collectives with significant ties to the Northern Territory. Mulkuṉ Wirrpanda, a senior artist of the Dhuḏi-Djapu clan from Dhuruputjpi, paints her clan’s sacred designs, including plants eaten and used when she was young. She shares her cultural knowledge for recovery and resistance.
Taking a different approach, Siying Zhou’s 2018 work Suk My Exotic Fingers uses the symbols of chicken feet and chopsticks to pointedly question national cultural identity and the dynamics of multicultural Australia from her Chinese-Australian vantage point.
An installation of painted Jukwarringa (Mud Mussel) shells, by Tiwi artists Kaye Brown, Raelene Lampuwatu Kerinauia, Janice Pungautiji Murray and Michelle Woody, directly references the practice of foraging, feasting and sharing seafood with family and community. It also reflects the ancient shell middens that demonstrate continuous engagement with Country.
Through these and other works, We Eat We Are explores food interrelations in the Northern Territory, recognising the region’s varied demographics and proximity to South East Asia. For Pirrie, our shared love for food presents a way of “cutting through the distance, or the language barrier” to engage more deeply with complex social and cultural relations.
We Eat We Are
Northern Centre for Contemporary Art
30 April—29 May
This article was originally published in the May/June 2021 print edition of Art Guide Australia.
The glass sculptures of Dale Chihuly, now on display at Adelaide Botanic Garden, speak to the power and pitfalls of visual pleasure in an increasingly contested world.
Joan Ross has long used her multidisciplinary practice to challenge the enduring legacy of colonialism in Australia. Her latest exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery shows significant works from throughout her career alongside key pieces from the NPG collection.
Kate Vassallo’s Ripple marks the conclusion of Artereal Gallery’s exhibition program, as the Sydney gallery is closing its doors after nearly two decades.
The quietly evocative new paintings of Gregory Hodge, now showing at Sullivan+Strumpf Sydney, are a lesson in the places where abstraction and figuration intersect.
In Biraddali Dancing on the Horizon, now showing at Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA), Australian-Filipina artist Bhenji Ra explores pangalay—a dance form indigenous to the Tausug and Bajau peoples from the Sulu Archipelago and Sabah in the Philippines.
Existing in the space between ritual, performance and ceremony, the body-centred work of Latai Taumoepeau rewrites the stories that shape our perception of Oceania—while using ancient traditions to tackle our most urgent modern concerns. Taumoepeau is now participating in Re-Stor(y)ing Oceania at Artspace.
