Flinders University Museum of Art. 5 Nov 2025
The touring exhibition ngaratya (together, us group, all in it together) is a magnificent exhibition of the work of Barkandji/Barkindji artists Nici Cumpston, Zena Cumpston, David Doyle, Kent Morris, Adrianne Semmens and Raymond Zada, and is showing as part of the 2025 Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art.
In 2022, the artists made several trips to Barkandji/Barkindji Country to reengage with their traditions and to research and develop their work, and at the gallery entrance, there is a map showing the location of Barkandji/Barkindji Country. They speak of the benefit of visiting Country and developing their work together.
“As a group, we aspired to make Country, our Mother, an active participant in this project.”
First shown at Bunjil Place Gallery in Victoria in 2023, the gallery exhibition is complemented by a website at ngaratya.com.au including, for example, images of the artwork, artists’ statements and interviews, podcasts and videos, educational resources and records of the artists’ travels on Country. The comprehensive and immersive ngaratya website contains a wealth of information showing the depth, breadth and richness of Barkandji/Barkindji culture.
Each artist has produced an artist’s book that resembles a scrapbook or family album providing details of their visits to Barkandji/Barkindji Country, and these are set out for viewers’ perusal at the entrance to the gallery, which is described as a Welcome Space.
Ngaratya, installation view showing Ngaratya artists’ Welcome Space;
FUMA 2025, photo: Chris Reid
Zena Cumpston, Michael Shawn-Fletcher and Lesley Head’s book Plants, Past, Present and Future, which describes First Nations plant management and use, is also on display at the Welcome Space, and Raymond Zada’s Welcome Space Soundscape, recorded on Country, can be heard throughout the gallery. The artists say that,
“This space is an invitation to understand not only our journeys together, but who we are and to whom we belong. In sharing our connection and positionality at this entry point we align with important cultural protocols.”
The six artists’ works can be seen here: ngaratya.com.au/artists.
ngaratya, installation view showing Nici Cumpston, Old Mutawintji Gorge I – VII, 2023;
foreground, Zena Cumpston, karkala, 2023; FUMA 2025, photo: Chris Reid
Nici Cumpston shows an exquisite series of hand-coloured photos, Old Mutawintji Gorge I - VII, depicting a site of cultural significance and ceremony. A noted photographic artist, Cumpston was the inaugural curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia and has been the artistic director of the Tarnanthi Festival at AGSA throughout its history.
ngaratya, installation view showing Zena Cumpston, ngarta-kiira (to return to Country) #1–#10, 2023, karkala, 2023, and Abundance – Jacob, Mary and Doughboy, 2023; foreground, David Doyle, Kamuru, 2022-2023; FUMA 2025, photo: Chris Reid
Zena Cumpston’s ngarta-kiira (to return to Country) #1–#10 comprises 10 prints that illustrate bush foods and the tools used in producing food, and Abundance – Jacob, Mary and Doughboy, an enlarged black and white photo of a family using such tools, with an accompanying text describing the objects and foods in the photo. Suspended from the ceiling is her karkala (bush bananas), woven from sedge.
Wood carver David Doyle’s installation is named kamuru and refers to the river red gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis), a tree of great significance to First Nations people. His installation includes a bark canoe, spears, boomerangs, coolamons and fishing nets, together with bronze facsimiles of mussel shells, yabbies and a tortoise shell.
Kent Morris’s kaleidoscopic photographs, entitled karta-kartaka — the pink cockatoo #1 – #6 and video karta-kartaka — the pink cockatoo #7, refer to a species of cockatoo which is now endangered due to habitat loss. The Barkandji/Barkindji people do not call the bird by its other name, the Major Mitchell cockatoo, because Mitchell was involved in atrocities against the Barkindji and other First Nations people.
Adrianne Semmens’s beautiful three-channel video kuntyiri, shadow, reflection, filmed by Johanis Lyons-Reid, shows her dancing on Country, and she also shows three sculptures suggesting traditional baskets, entitled Holdin I-III.
Raymond Zada’s dramatic Bloodline comprises 2,046 laser-etched drawings of figures on a blood-red enamel ground representing ten generations of his ancestors. The design of the figures refers to rock-art drawings, and his intention is “to pay homage to every Ancestor who contributed to my DNA over the past ten generations.”
Collectively, the artworks and artists’ statements show the many ways in which First Nations people connect to Country. The excellent and illuminating ngaratya (together, us group, all in it together) exhibition and website stands as the artists’ own record and reclamation of their culture, it positions it as a living, thriving culture, and it warmly welcomes non-Indigenous viewers into their world.
ngaratya is also important in combining a gallery exhibition with an extensive online resource that may be accessed beyond the gallery exhibition’s duration. Such a format provides a model for exhibitions of all kinds and especially those exhibitions offering in-depth cultural and historical study.
Chris Reid
When: 7 Oct to 28 Nov
Where: Flinders University Museum of Art
More info: ngaratya.com.au
Raymond Zada, Bloodline, 2023 (detail)
Installation view
Bunjil Place Gallery, 2023
Courtesy of the artist
Photo: Christian Capurro
