View from Atnelkentyarliweke (Anzac Hill)  (Copy)

mparntwe/alice springs

2022

Languages of Knowing (Finalist) The 42nd Alice Prize

There are different ways and systems of knowing. Knowledge is stored in the shelves of a library. It is stored in country. It can be lost and found, removed and added, separated and intwined.

 This art work explores these ideas in a central Australian context. The CSIRO office in Alice was a vibrant place where significant, locally relevant research was carried out. This office was closed in 2016. Jobs and associated projects were made redundant. I have used the library catalogue cards as a symbol of this repository of abandoned knowledge. The seemingly random colour coding on some of the cards represents western, scientific systems of knowledge while the 6-colour reduction lino print of Tjoritja (Western Macdonell Ranges) represents indigenous, traditional knowledge held in country.

2021

This love between Exhibition

Returning to Central Australia and feeling the love for this place again.


1995 - 2010

On our bush block just outside Alice, I watched the cycles and rhythms of the desert, recording them through drawing; the beautiful moths, native grasses and birds that arrived after big summer rain and the loss of colour in the dry times. I travelled to remote communities, observed the musings of town life and found a deep affinity to the desert and its people.

This affinity allowed stories to surface. I became fascinated with the Seven Sisters/Pleiades constellation. Moving and slipping between earth and sky, plant and animal, birds and humans, I called up the Pleiades in the context of Central Australia.