Jintulu: People of the Sun
17 February -
27 April 2024
Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery
35 Stirling Highway,,
Crawley WA
Presented by the Berndt Museum and Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery in association with Perth Festival, Jintulu: People of the Sun follows the long shadow cast by colonisation and the bleak legacy of genocide, dispossession and racism that remains etched into contemporary Australia. In this powerful exhibition, Jintulu transforms UWA’s Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, interweaving ancient stories with more recent experiences of control, displacement and appropriation. Taken from the Martu language of the Western Desert, ‘Jintulu’ posits Aboriginal Australians as the ‘People of the Sun’, strengthened by and bathed in its life-giving force.
The exhibition juxtaposes new works by senior Walmajarri artist Murungkurr Terry Murray, acclaimed Martu artist Curtis Taylor and Persian South African artist Natalie Scholtz with iconic works from the University of Western Australia’s collections by Valerie Takao Binder, Irwin Lewis, Sidney Nolan and Alison Alder.
"Against an Australian painting tradition of white settler alienation within the land, this is a more complex
picturing of racialisation, intersections, solidarities, conflicts and conflations. For Scholtz, the grotesque
can be liberating too – fleeing from gendered forms of exoticisation and orientalism. A child of immigrant parents of Persian and South African descent, Scholtz’s work also recognises the complexity of black and brown identities within a settler context.. (Jessyca Hutchens , 2024)"