Feature... Ngaylu Nyanganyi Ngura Winki (I Can See All Those Places)
Kunmanara Carroll, Kiwirrkura, 2021; Ilpili, 2021; Yumari, 2021; Walungurru, 2021.
Committed to his custodial responsibilities of Country, Luritja, Pitjantjatjara and Pintupi artist Kunmanara Carroll’s captivating paintings and ceramics merge his deep knowledge of country with his beautifully intricate yet minimalist style.
Words by Margaret Hancock Davis
Margaret was curator of the 2021 JamFactory ICON exhibition.
Photography by Grant Hancock.
Luritja, Pitjantjatjara and Pintupi artist, Kunmanara Carroll was born in 1950 at the former ration station of Haasts Bluff. Carroll’s father, a Pintupi man, Henry Paripata Tjampitjinpa and his Pitjantjatjara mother, Nancy Napangati, spent time living in Haasts Bluff before moving briefly to Areyonga and then Papunya. As a 19-year-old Mr Carroll moved to Pukatja (Ernabella) to live with an aunt after the sudden death of his parents.
Mr Carroll remained in Pukatja for his entire working life. Described by his wife Alison Milyika Carroll as wati wiru (a good man) Carroll was a respected elder in his community. Having worked in health, and for many years as a community constable, it was not until his retirement that Mr Carroll turned to art. He began painting at Ernabella Arts in 2009, and in 2011 he was introduced to ceramics. He quickly established himself as one of the art centre’s most senior and revered practitioners, with works held in major public and private collections across Australia and solo exhibitions presented in Australia, Belgium and the United States.
In 2017, a creative project titled Mark and Memory saw Mr Carroll return to his grandmother’s and father’s country, his custodial lands near Kintore (NT) and Kiwirrkura (WA). This was the first time Mr Carroll had returned to this country since leaving the region as a child and he visited significant sites between Kintore, Kiwirrkura, and Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay). During this trip, Mr Carroll was determined to connect with senior Pintupi men who he hoped could bridge the personal, social and cultural gap that had persisted since he left these custodial lands. The resulting body of work was exhibited at the Art Gallery of South Australia as an outstanding feature of the Tarnanthi festival of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art in October 2017.
Concerned with passing on the new knowledge and experience gained from this trip, Carroll’s paternal homeland remained his unwavering source of inspiration and was a recurring subject within his oeuvre of painting and ceramic sculpture.
Kunmanara Carroll: Ngaylu nyanganyi ngura winki (I can see all those places) is the ninth exhibition in JamFactory’s annual ICON series. The series celebrates the achievements of South Australia’s most influential visual artists working in craft-based media and Mr Carroll is the first Aboriginal artist to be featured. The exhibition, which opened at JamFactory in Adelaide in August 2021 and will tour nationally until May 2024, was developed in partnership with Ernabella Arts. It showcases a significant new body of ceramic works supported by related paintings and a woven tapestry produced by the Australian Tapestry Workshop.
JamFactory has had a long association with Ernabella Arts (the oldest Aboriginal Art Centre in Australia), exhibiting works by artists associated with Ernabella since the late 1970s and collaborating on a variety of projects focused on ceramics since the 1990s.
Nestled in the eastern fringes of the Musgrave Ranges, the township of Pukatja is located on the ancient Country of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara people. Founded by the Presbyterian Board of Missions at Pukatja in 1937, Ernabella Mission was the first permanent settlement of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. The establishing principles of the Ernabella Mission were in stark contrast to many others. Here reciprocity was at the core; Anangu were encouraged to keep language and culture alive while also being taught the new ways of Christianity, whilst staff at the mission were required to learn the local language, Pitjantjatjara.
A craft room (later to become Ernabella Arts) was established in 1948. The first craft products made on the Mission were hand-loomed woven fabrics and hand-pulled and knotted floor rugs that featured distinctive patterns that became known as the Ernabella walka or anapalayaku walka (Ernabella’s design). Like many Aboriginal art centres across the country, acrylic paints and canvas were provided to the artists at Ernabella Arts after the Western Desert Arts movement started in Papunya in the early 1970s.
Kunmanara Carroll, Yumari, 2020. Photographer: Grant Hancock.
Kunmanara Carroll, Walungurru, 2020. Photographer: Grant Hancock.
In 1996, a new media came to the centre through visiting ceramic artist Robin Best and studio technician Peter Ward. A pilot program was introduced in which Best (who was working at JamFactory’s ceramic studios) sent large bisque-fired ceramic platters to Pukatja for the women in the art centre to decorate. The underglaze decorated platters were then packed up and returned to Adelaide before they were glazed and fired.
The success of this program led to further collaborations between JamFactory and the artists of Ernabella Arts. In 2003 the Pukatja pottery was established in the space once dedicated to printmaking. Hand building skills were taught and decorating techniques such as lost-wax resist as well as sgraffito were employed, making Ernabella Arts synonymous with Australian Indigenous ceramics.
Discussions between JamFactory and Ernabella that led to Mr Carroll’s selection as the JamFactory ICON for 2021 began in early 2019 and, following the border closures and lockdowns of the first wave of the global pandemic, in August 2020 JamFactory’s CEO Brian Parkes and I had the great pleasure to travel to Pukatja, and Ernabella Arts to meet with Mr Carroll.
When we arrived at Ernabella Arts, Mel George (the then art centre manager) enthusiastically greeted us. ‘He is already here. He wants to show you his work.’ We were ushered in through the small shop/ gallery, the painting room, and out to the large ceramics’ studio where Mr Carroll was sitting among an incredible body of works. Impressive hand-built ceramic forms redolent of termite mounds and waterholes, made with a coarse stoneware, glazed and with surfaces etched, stood alongside four large paintings in muted hues of blue, yellow ochre, rose and olive green, their surfaces scratched and dotted. A truly impressive body of work by a prodigious maker.
While we sat there, Carroll conveyed to us the stories of the places depicted, his homeland where the wanampi (water snake) winds its way across the Country, where waterholes provide the precious gift of kapi (water) supporting life, the importance of the Ininti tree, as well as places he and his father had once camped. This is land he travelled as a child, only to return many years later as a much older man. When talking, Mr Carroll often paused, looked beyond us and smiled, before continuing, often repeating the words ‘I can see all those places’.
Kunmanara Carroll, Ilpili, 2021; Walungurru, 2021.
Legacy of an ICON
Only weeks after the ICON exhibition opened to the public Mr Carroll passed away peacefully surrounded by his family. The powerful body of work in this national touring exhibition and the accompanying 138-page hard-cover monograph published in partnership with Wakefield Press are part of an important legacy he has left to us all.
Kunmanara Carroll: Ngaylu nyanganyi ngura winki (I can see all those places) monograph is available to purchase in store and online.