THE MATERIAL ART FAIR- Mexico City 8-11 February

Billy Yunkurra Atkins, Lily Jatarr Long, Amy Wurta French, Annette Lormada

The exhibition presents important figurative artworks from four remote Aboriginal artists representing three language groups from the Pilbara and Kimberley in Western Australia.

 This Karlamilyi area, big land. That’s a ngurra (home Country, camp) belonging to our old people, Warnman people. We talk for our land, our jila (snake). I grew up in this Country, my Country. This land belongs to our father. In pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) days I walked around here, used to walk up and down tuwa (sandhill) and back to the main camp belonging to Martu. We are Warnman ladies, painting Kintyre and Karlamilyi. We can share this Country.”

- Sisters Wurta Amy French and Jatarr Lily Long

 The artists in this selection were born on ancestral homelands; places that are now sites of intense mining speculation and pastoral intervention. The artists paint a version of Australia that predates these developments sharing their stories in protest and to preserve the memory of Country before this change occurred. Yunkurra Billy Atkins is at the centre of this selection; for many years his depiction of cannibals was an ongoing campaign against the mining of Uranium at Lake Disappointment, right up until his death in 2021. Sisters Amy French and Lily Long have been creating depictions of Warnmun country in Nullagine mapping out landscape pre gold mining and colonial interference. Walmajarri artist Annette Lormada from Fitzroy Crossing in the Kimberley articulates the effects of the cattle industry on the sacred river, Martuwarra. Together this group of work brings to life many untold histories, showing an urgency to create against the grain.