Exhibition Insight... Ngayuku Kamiku Ngayuku Tjukurpa (My Grandmother, My Story)

Selinda Davdison, Karru Tjukurpa II, 2021, blown glass, high fire enamel, 338 x 210 mm, photographer: Sam Roberts. — Selinda Davdison, *Karru Tjukurpa II,* 2021, blown glass, high fire enamel, 338 x 210 mm, photographer: Sam Roberts.

Selinda Davidson is known for her muted palette and beautiful linear patterns created by scraping back glass enamel paint. Davidson presents a series of paintings translated onto glass vessels, the result of her mentorship with renowned South Australian glass artist Clare Belfrage in JamFactory’s Glass Studio, alongside a selection of paintings by her grandmother, Molly Nampitjin Miller, celebrating the intergenerational exchange between the two artists.

Words by Caitlin Eyre

In Ngayuku Kamiku Ngayuku Tjukurpa (My Grandmother, My Story), emerging Ninuku Arts artist Selinda Davidson presents a series of new glass vessels that were created as part of her mentorship with renowned South Australian glass artist Clare Belfrage in JamFactory’s Glass Studio. The lustrous hand-worked surfaces of these vessels feature Davidson’s highly textured linear paintings and are the culmination of her experiments and explorations into the medium of glass as a new mode of cultural expression. These glass works are displayed alongside a significant painting by Davidson’s grandmother and respected elder, Molly Nampitjin Miller, that has kindly been loaned from a
private collection.

The foundation for the production of these works is the result of Walka Waru Kalawtjanga, a 2019 collaborative project between Ninuku Arts and JamFactory’s Glass Studio that saw Ninuku artists translate their paintings on canvas onto glass. Located in Kalka, near the tri-state border of South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, Ninuku Arts is the most remote art centre in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. Displayed as part of the Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, these works presented the contemporary medium of glass as a new vehicle of cultural expression for the Ninuku community.

Guided by art centre manager Mandi King, the community appropriated the traditional Swedish Graal technique to realise their designs. In this contemporary translation of Graal, small glass ‘starter bubbles’ in the artists’ chosen shades were sent to Ninuku Arts where the community of artists then hand-painted their bold and colourful designs onto the glass forms in enamel paint before being fired in the centre’s kiln. Upon returning to Adelaide, the works were coated with more layers of clear glass and blown into their final enlarged size by JamFactory glass artists.

As an emerging artist, Davidson has shown particular skill and confidence in working in this new medium and is increasingly being known for her works on glass. Davidson’s work is characterised by a distinct muted colour palette and the linear patterns created when the enamel paint she applies to the Graal is scraped back before being fired. In developing the artworks for this exhibition, Davidson has travelled to Adelaide to work with and be mentored by renowned South Australian glass artist Clare Belfrage. Through a series of workshops held at Belfrage’s studio and JamFactory’s Glass Studio, Davidson has explored and experimented with a variety of glass drawing and painting techniques. Hailing from a lineage of artists, Davidson often worked alongside her grandparents, senior artists Jimmy Donegan and Molly Nampitjin Miller, at Ninuku Arts learning how to paint tjukurpa (ancestral stories) and translate these stories into her own unique walka (design). To highlight this lineage and the painted canvas origins of these works on glass, Davidson’s vessels are presented alongside one of her grandmother’s paintings.

Molly Nampitjin Miller is a co-founding director of Ninuku Arts and a respected elder of the Kalka community. She was born in Wakapulkatjara in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands of South Australia in 1948 and grew up in the Warburton mission. Miller is a prolific weaver and was one of the first women to learn basket making at the Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunyjatjara Women’s Council workshop in 1995. She is credited with introducing raffia to stitch baskets in place of jute string or wool, with raffia now serving as the most common binding material in Ninuku baskets. Dynamic and innovative in her creative practice, Miller works across a variety of mediums including soft sculpture and paintings. Miller’s paintings often depict the tjukurpa (ancestral stories) surrounding the community of Papulaktja, Western Australia that were passed down through the generations of her people and bear testament to her profound and resilient connection to Country. By presenting these works alongside one another, this exhibition celebrates the cultural knowledge, family connection and artistic lineage between these two generations of Indigenous artists across very different mediums of self-expression.