Two exhibitions at Bundanon Art Museum show the magic in Country

详细摘要

At Bundanon Art Museum, exhibitions of works by Betty Muffler and Mehwish Iqbal show how art can heal the soul.

Bundanon, a gallery, hotel and learning centre on the banks of the Shoalhaven River in southern New South Wales, is a healing place for me. I am a woman of the estuaries, both culturally and by choice, so when I am there, on the slope of a hill looking over mobs of kangaroos and hillsides honeycombed with wombat burrows to the estuary, I find solace. All Country is healing, but some places have a greater magic that makes them sacred.

I am excited every time I get to go to Bundanon Art Museum, not only because of the extraordinary beauty of the space and its surroundings but also because the exhibitions there are always worth the visit. Curator Rachel Kent is a master of juxtaposition and intertextual communication. Her seasonal shows are conversations: between the landscape surrounding Bundanon gallery (itself a text to those with the knowledge to read it) and the gallery space – built bunker-like into the side of a hill – and most often between two artists, who bring related, even if apparently disparate, stories into the space.

This season is no exception. It couples the art of Pitjantjatjara artist Betty Muffler, who works at Iwantja Arts in Indulkana in the Aṉangu, Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara Lands in northern South Australia, and Sydney-based Pakistani-born artist Mehwish Iqbal, to talk to us about the beauty and power of country and culture for healing.

Betty Muffler is a Ngangkaṟi, a traditional healer, responsible for keeping both her people and her Country healthy. Some of that Country was irradiated by the nuclear tests carried out at Emu Field and Maralinga in the 1950s and early 1960s. No longer healthy enough to walk Country, Muffler flies across the landscape as an eagle, looking for sick Country and sick people. Every one of her paintings has the same title as the exhibition itself, Ngangkaṟi Ngura, which in Pitjantjatjara language means “Healing Country”. They are depictions of her sacred Country and the stories it contains.

At 82, this is Muffler’s…

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