Jan Murphy Gallery is pleased to present ‘Minyma Kungkaralpa ngulu wirtjapakanu’, a new exhibition by acclaimed senior Indigenous artists Iluwanti Ken, Sylvia Kanytjupia Ken and Tjungkara Ken. Based in Amata in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands of South Australia, the artists share a close familial lineage – Iluwanti is the mother of Sylvia and Aunty of Tjungkara. The artists often paint alongside each other as they depict their individual expression of Anangu culture and ‘Tjukurpa’ (ancestral knowledge and law).

“In each work, across distinct visions and different techniques, Tjala women artists climb layers of time – near and deep, conceptual and physical – to constantly reimagine and reinterpret the subject matter, making something new, something meaningful for tomorrow. In art making, Anangu are remembering what the ancestors did and what the ancestors taught them. Bringing the stories up to the surface and making them alive in peoples minds.” (Genevieve O’Callaghan, edited by Tjala Arts, Nganampa Kampatjangka Unngu: Beneath the canvas, the lives and stories of the Tjala Artists, 2015, Wakefield Press, P.262).

The exhibition title translates to ‘Women running away into the stars in the Milky Way’, referencing the Seven Sisters creation story that features prominently in Anangu culture and art. The story follows a well- known ancestral narrative of the Pleiades constellations (the sisters) and a sinister man who followed them across the night sky. The punctuation of dots painted across the vast surfaces, creates a rhythm and an immersive topography that invites you to travel through the remote desert landscape, following the journey of the Seven Sisters as they evade the traps of their menacing pursuer, known here as Wati Nyiru.

Sylvia Kanytjupai Ken and Tjungkara Ken both paint with a punu stick in a signature palette of warm reds, purple, orange, yellow and white, the layering of dots depicting the rock holes, waterholes, and significant places that the story traverses.

“I paint my family’s side of the country where the Sisters travelled through Cave Hill and Alkunyunta, all the way through to Kuli. My right to paint this part of the Dreaming is established. Tjukurpa amula means a really important and true story.” – Sylvia Kanytjupai Ken

“I do paintings about my country. That’s ngura: rockholes and the land, the hills and big creek beds. Sometimes I do stories about the Seven Sisters and about country. I only paint with punu sticks and not a brush… When we do paintings it’s like looking down from the top, like looking from an aeroplane.” – Tjungkara Ken

“I paint the stories of my father’s country – Walawuru Tjukurpa – the story of the eagles. This is my tjukurpa and all of my children’s tjukurpa too.”– Iluwanti Ken