MOREE has welcomed a group of artists, rangers and curators from Western Australia in its big ticket art event of the year.
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“This is our blockbuster exhibition for 2015,” Moree Plains Gallery director Vivien Thompson said.
‘We Don’t Need a Map: A Martu Experience of the Western Desert” consists of five videos, more than 57 paintings, drawings and etches and a number of hand-woven baskets in what Ms Thompson described as a full sensory experience of life traditional life in the Pilbara.
“Some of the Martu artists only came out of the desert in the 1960s and had never seen white society before,” she said. “So within living memory the land was hunted, managed and looked after in a traditional manner … and it still is.”
“The video follow the artists, who are female elders, into the desert and shows them hunting, burning country and collecting bush tucker.”
Visitors got to meet four of the artists over the weekend, with the exhibition opening held on Friday night and a day of family activities the following day.
Earlier that day the visitors were given a welcome to country in Kamilaroi by Bronwyn Spearim and her students from Moree East, who also performed a Brolga dance.
The women sang their paintings – songs which explain the significance of the images and their connection to country – and held basket weaving workshops with grasses brought from the Western Desert.
They also gave talks, as did the three curators and three rangers who travelled to Moree with the exhibition.
“The rangers, who were all women, spoke about traditional ways of looking after the country, of using fire as a hunting technique but also to ensure the undergrowth remained fertile,” Ms Thompson said.
The Moree Plains Gallery will host the exhibition until August 22, during which time works from the Martu artists will also be on sale at the Yaama Ganu Centre.
“It’s fantastic to be able to run complementary exhibitions,” Ms Thompson said. “People come here and fully immerse themselves a sensory experience of life in the Western Desert, and they can go buy the artwork at Yaama Ganu.”