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We are pleased to present this important series of ceramics pieces by Tjunkaya Tapaya OAM, alongside her works on paper, as part of the Together we tell our stories bi-annual Indigenous exhibition series. Tjungkaya Tapaya OAM works across painting, printmaking, ceramics and fibre based work. Her practice is often collaborative, and she works as a member of the Tjanpi Desert Weavers, creating innovative fibre art and woven works. Tjanpi Desert Weavers is a not-for-profit Indigenous social enterprise of the NPY Women’s Council, a resource, advocacy and support organisation for Aboriginal women living in remote communities across the western and central deserts. It was created out of a need for meaningful and culturally appropriate employment and to enable women to earn a regular income from selling their fibre art. Tjanpi (meaning ‘grass’) supports the production and marketing of baskets, sculptures and seed jewellery made by more than 400 artists from 28 remote communities and builds on a long tradition of working with natural fibres to create objects for daily and ceremonial use. Aboriginal women regularly come together on country to collect grass, sculpt and weave, sing and dance and keep culture strong while creating beautiful, intricate and expressive fibre art. Tapaya has exhibited widely in Australia and overseas since 1971. Her first solo exhibition Nintintjaku – teaching, showing, passing on, was held at Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne in 2012. Group exhibitions include Obsessed: Compelled to make, Australian Design Centre, Sydney (2018 and touring nationally 2018-21); Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters, National Museum of Australia, Canberra (2017-18); MCA Collection: Today Tomorrow Yesterday, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2016); String Theory: Focus on Contemporary Australian Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2013 and touring nationally 2013-15); and the 29th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin (2012). Tapaya’s work is held in a number of public collections including the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; National Museum of Australia, Canberra; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane and the British Museum, London.

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Sabbia Gallery has represented Lynette Lewis for several years and we are delighted to host, as part of our biannual Indigenous exhibition series, Together we tell our stories 2021, a duo exhibition featuring Lynette and her daughter Jayanna Andy. Jayanna shows great promise and is following in the footsteps of her mother, telling her stories in her own voice. Referencing the telling of stories in sand (milpatjunanyi), the sgraffito technique of scratching into the surface of the ceramic form is ideal for creating the marks of the artist in their own style. I was twelve years old when my father and my mother took me to my father’s country, Makiri, to collect tjala (honey ants). My father told me the Dreaming story of how the tjala came from Papunya, through Amata and then to Makiri and that’s where they made their home. There are holes in the rock, like rock holes, that were made by the tjala in the dreamtime. My father has passed away and Makiri is a place for men’s business only. I still go out with my family in the country around Ernabella to collect tjala after the rains when the ground is soft, the black ones are the best. Makiri is desert country like Wamikata. Wamikata is a big red sand dune near Ernabella. We go there to collect maku (witchetty grubs) and tjanpi (grass) for weaving. It’s also a place for teaching milpatjunanyi (telling stories in the sand) to children. Lynette Lewis, 2021 My grandmother Atipalku paints her father’s Dreaming on canvas. It is Mulayangu tjukurpa (story). Two years ago I went to that country with my mother Lynette and my grandmother Atipalku and we camped there. Atipalku told us the story of the wanampi (water snake) that lives there. I am also telling my great grandfather’s story on ceramics. It’s the same story that Atipalku is painting, but I’m making the waterholes. These are the rock holes where the wanampi lives. Jayanna Andy, 2021

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'Lemon Light' by Alichia van Rhijn presents sculptural works that reference early memories of childhood, both before her immigration to Australia and after. Multi-faceted elements and anthropomorphic forms are in a state of flux. Shifting and changing as they span the fluidity of time, these forms investigate phenomenological notions, alluding to personal and shared experience, memory, nostalgia and trauma. Through the use of distilled minimalist forms, symbolic and ritualistic totems are arranged throughout the space, hoping to initiate pause and contemplation. 

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Reflexion: "careful or long consideration or thought”. [Collins English Dictionary] For this exhibition I am reflecting upon the interplay between what we see and understand in the natural world and how that can be abstracted to colour and form which provokes the emotive response. These works are intended to be on the cusp of realism. Gerry King, 2021

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