Paper short abstract:

South Australian Museum Indigenous curator and Museum Anthropologist discuss the making of the 'NGURRA: Home in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands' exhibition, part of the TARNANTHI Festival, through a floor talk inside the show.

Paper long abstract:

South Australian Museum Indigenous curator and Museum Anthropologist discuss the making of the 'NGURRA: Home in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands' exhibition, part of the TARNANTHI Festival, through a floor talk inside the show.

Ngurra means home in the languages of Australia's Western Desert people. But it is more than that: Ngurra encompasses of history, memory and relationships. It is the sedimentation of human experience through the prism of place. 'NGURRA: Home in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands' is an exhibition that explores this foundational concept in contemporary desert life and art. It is therefore not simply an exhibition of art, but an exploration of where that art comes from and the world it expresses. The exhibition explores dynamic shifts in material culture and changing relationships to the materiality of 'home'. Through exploring youth culture, the exhibition also unpicks museum conventions in which the practices and traditions of older generations are commonly essentialised or prioritised as 'cultural'.

NGURRA is the product of a multi-year collaboration between the museum and the Ngaanyatjarra artists, and this presentation will explore the curatorial and creative processes that emerged in that relationship.