Anne and Gordan Samstag Museum of Art. 7 Jun 2024
Curated by Erica Green, founding director of the Samstag Museum and Jared Thomas (Nukunu), writer, researcher and educator at the South Australian Museum, Mulka Yata / The Knowledge of Place presents recent work by Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists in homage to the ancestral home of the Adnyamathanha people, the Ikara-Flinders Ranges region of South Australia. Described by Darren Jorgensen in the accompanying catalogue essay as a rarity, the exhibition represents the coming together of a ‘double nation’ of separate art worlds from which Indigenous and non-Indigenous practitioners work.
Mulka Yata/The Knowledge of Place installation view, 2024, Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia. Photography by Sia Duff. Courtesy of Samstag Museum of Art.
In the Mulka Yata documentary film made by Jared Thomas and Malcolm McKinnon to accompany the exhibition, Kristian Coulthard shares that his practice of carving is ‘in the blood’ as a vital part of family lineage, the process of his work maintaining a profound connection to culture, language and knowledge. Presented in close company with historical work made by previous generations of woodcarvers, Coulthard’s masterful Akurra serpent sculptures are shown here in public for the first time.
As two pairs of male and female serpents carved from local materials appear entwined on floor plinths, strong curvilinear shadows command attention towards two further serpentine forms installed across an opposite wall. In each of the sculptures, intricate scales and markings etched onto the underside of their bellies compel slow observation from close quarters, the natural colours found in the wood not unlike the unique markings of indigenous reptile species. Alongside earlier examples of walking sticks, boomerangs, shields, and containers, the presence of Coulthard’s Akurra highlights the significance of tradition and change, continuity and connection as the artist emphasises on film.
An evocative sound installation produced by Sasha Gribich, which features the voice of Rosemary Nursey-Bay and familiar bird sounds, transports the viewer to a landscape from which each artist in the exhibition reflects individual relationship and experience. Birdcalls and the sounds of air moving through trees enriches the viewer’s experience of John R Walker’s immersive gestural paintings, which describe a landscape that lives and breathes.
Mulka Yata/The Knowledge of Place installation view, 2024, Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia. Photography by Sia Duff. Courtesy of Samstag Museum of Art.
The open spaces of unpainted canvas appearing between dancing, painterly lines of violet, salmon pink, and amarylde yellow recall the vast expanse and unique diversity of the Australian landscape. The movement of Walker’s reverent, intuitive brush describes details of rock face and mountain edge, groupings of trees and the airy spaces between. The sensuality of painted surfaces – infused with both light and detail – captures an intimate knowledge and experience of being in place, and elegant drawings in two concertina books unfold across shelves at the back of the space as further annotations to the paintings.
Oratunga Gorge, John R Walker, Mulka Yata/The Knowledge of Place, 2024, Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia. Photography by Sia Duff. Courtesy of Samstag Museum of Art.
Concerned with resources taken from place, current Guildhouse Fellow Kyoko Hashimoto in collaboration with Guy Keulemans have produced handmade papers with timbers of acacia and kurrajong to develop paper mâché forms resembling rocks and other objects found on Adnyamathanha Country. Presented as a collection of rings, these intriguing objects are arranged alongside digital representations of rocks, wood and bone, screenprinted with ink made from ochre and verdigris.
Mulka Yata/The Knowledge of Place installation view, 2024, Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia. Photography by Sia Duff. Courtesy of Samstag Museum of Art.
Between each of the Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists in this exhibition, Mulka Yata/The Knowledge of Place is central to relationship with Adnyamathanha Country offering an enduring connection with the past and the present. In bringing together a ‘double nation’ of artists, the curators have developed a proposition as to what a sustainable and nurturing collaboration between Country, culture, and communities could look like.
Melanie Cooper
When: 7 Jun to 20 Sep
Where: Samstag Museum of Art
More Info: www.unisa.edu.au
Mulka Yata/The Knowledge of Place installation view, 2024,
Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia.
Photography by Sia Duff. Courtesy of Samstag Museum of Art.
