Kwatja Etathaka / Living Water

Artists working at Iltja Ntjarra (Many Hands) studio in Mparntwe/Alice Springs command one of our major landscape traditions: the Hermansburg watercolour school of Central Australia. For the exhibition Kwatja Etathaka/Living Water the artists summon their resonant landscape tradition to create decisive contemporary installations: dramatic watercolours on metal sit beside delicate botanical miniatures and ethereal watercolours rendered and baked into glass.

Kwatja Etathaka/Living Water signals a crisis threatening the foundations of the sublime landscape and its ecology. Across the Western Desert, Aboriginal people use the term 'living water' to describe water sources including rock holes and soakage waters fed by underground springs. Living waters are dropping and often contaminated. In remote communities like Hermansburg/Ntaria, tap water is dirty, smelly and bad tasting and compromises health and hygiene.

The exhibition includes a salon-style collection of delicate botanical paintings that form a catalogue of ancient medicinal plants and foods. These specimens are disappearing due to mining and fracking threatening ground water and the impact of feral species. New works on glass collaborate with Canberra Glassworks, with sacred landscapes shimmering mirage-like in glass. The concepts of regeneration—water and fire—signal a defence of water and Country as sources of life.