Galleries

Tanarthi festival shows best of Aboriginal creativity in gallery Namatjira tradition

Tanarthi festival shows best of Aboriginal creativity in gallery Namatjira tradition

 

An Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art festival – the biggest in South Australia – showcased more than 450 creatives from around the nation in 2016.

The Tarnanthi festival was supported by the state government, the Art Gallery of South Australia and a partnership with BHP Billiton.

The festival, at 22 venues across the city, included exhibition painting, photography, jewellery, textiles, photography, printmaking, sculpture, moving images, body adornment, aromatic art, sound and object installations.

The works came from Broome to Redfern and Torres Strait to Launceston.

Tarnanthi’s artistic director Nici Cumpston was the first Aboriginal curator appointed to the Art Gallery of South Australia.

The gallery was the first in Australia to display work by an Aboriginal painter in a state collection when it bought an Albert Namatjira work in 1939.

The ambition behind Tanhathi is for South Australia the international hub for Aboriginal visual art, building on its tradition of leadership in promoting Aboriginal art and being a gateway to the desert lands to our north.

The partnership in the festival by BHP Billiton is part of its commitment to scientific, environmental and social initiatives in South Australia.

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