The annual Tarnanthi Festival will this year go international, with a major exhibition opening in Brittany, France on Friday.
This year the festival will exhibit works from South Australia’s far northern Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands will feature at the Musée des Beaux Arts de Rennes in Brittany.
The installation work, Kulata Tjuta – (Many Spears) will appear as the centrepiece of the exhibition and feature paintings, photographs and over 1000 wooden spears suspended in the air.
Kulata Tjuta is an artistic response to the British atomic bomb testing on Anangu Country in northern and central South Australia throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s.
Kulata Tjuta also represents the history and importance of cultural maintenance, including the passing on of traditional skills like spear making from one generation to the next.
The work began as a small project involving just five men from the community of Amata back in 2017 and then expanded to include over 100 Anangu men from across various communities in the APY region.
With the support of the APY Art Collective, the work of 34 Artists from various APY art centres who collaborated on the exhibition will occupy an entire floor of the Musée des Beaux Arts de Rennes. The exhibition will be supported by a multilingual gallery publication in Pitjantjatjara, English and French.
Tarnanthi runs until January 31.
