Ngura Puti launches at ReDot Fine Art Gallery

The opening of works from Mimili Maku Arts will take place on 5 September.

In a release, ReDot Fine Art Gallery will host the first international exhibition of the works from Mimili Maku Arts, an indigenous owned and directed art centre, located in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands, in the far north west of South Australia, where some of the most exciting, fresh and contemporary Aboriginal art of recent years has emerged.

The area is dominated by red sandstone ridges dotted with boulders, a stony landscape that holds a network of waterholes and streams, making the area abundant in sites rich of plant and animal life and sacred sites. One special site is Antara, located south west of Mimili and home of the Maku Tjukurpa (witchetty grub dreaming) which gives the art centre its name. Maku is the Pitjantjatjara word for the edible witchetty grubs or caterpillars found in the roots of the witchetty bush (Acacia kempeana or Wattle Tree).

The artists of Mimili Maku have been painting for almost a decade but the art centre didn’t gain wider recognition until Milatjari Pumani, a respected senior Yankunytjatjara woman, started painting in 2008 at the age of 80, propelling this remote community into the spotlight of the modern Australian contemporary art scene. Today the art centre works with more than 50 artists, men and women, young and old from Mimili and the four surrounding homelands of Perentie Bore, Wanmara, Blue Hills and Sandy’s Bore.

The whimsical works currently being produced at Mimili Maku Arts continue to attract attention with their traditional imagery, symbols and narrative combined with the abstract wild application of colour and texture. Artists retain individual styles, differing modes of application, brushstrokes and colour combinations, but all manage to create fluid pieces depicting mountain ranges, waterholes, caves and other topographical elements of the land, embedded with sacred spiritual connection.

Equal in traditional appeal and contemporary resonance, Mimili Maku works are considered some of the most exciting to emerge from the APY Lands in recent years and are found in all important private and public collections in Australia and overseas focused on Aboriginal art.

This exhibition will showcase superb works by the legendary Milatjari Pumani, her daughters Ngupulya and Betty Pumani, Tuppy Ngintja Goodwin and Kathleen Tjapalyi amongst others.