Tarnanthi
Waringarri's senior artist Peggy Griffiths is featured in TARNANTHI 2019, the biennale exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia, with Peggy being one of only three artists selected from the Kimberley.Project Categories
Dawang Stories
Culture
Community
Project Status - Current
About This Project
The Work of Peggy Griffiths
For the past year Peggy Griffiths has meticulously worked on an enourmous 10 metre work on paper, which now accompanies another 8 metre work on paper (completed the previous year), as well as ceramic objects and an animation at TARNANTHI. The installation is a first for the Art Gallery of South Australia for the scale of the paper works and is challenging due to their fragility. Perhaps also a metaphor for her fragile Country and culture, the pieces collaborate in expressing Peggy's interpretation of her precious Country and with subtlety, the darker histories that lie within.
With an arts practice spanning over 30 years, this is a timely accomplishment for Peggy after her almost lifelong husband and accomplished artist, senior law man Mr A. Griffiths passed away last year. In fact, Peggy had already began working on the first 8 metre work on paper in his presence. With inspirational resolve and dedication, Peggy completed and fleshed out new components to her installation now exhibited at the Art Gallery of South Australia from 18th October 2019 to 27 January 2020.
Accompanying the two works of paper is a powerful animation titled At First Sight created with the assistance of animator Bernadette Trench-Thiedeman. Spoken in Miriwoong with both English and Miriwoong subtitles, the animation utlises Griffith's works on paper as a backdrop to a narrative concerning the first time Griffith's mother saw a gadiya (white man) on her Country. The installation is an ambitious body of work due to the artist recording her entire Country with fine ochre brush strokes and one feels almost encased in the vastness of her land while important dreaming and hunting sites draw you in. There is no doubt Griffiths knows her Country intimately. Subtle and delicate are the works on paper, as those familiar with Griffiths' paintings will know only too well. Ambitious again is the animation, compelling and emotional, it informs us of the troubling histories Griffiths and her family endured. As Peggy states .." people come to my Country and it is beatuiful but they do not know what happened here." Eloquently, her work serves to illuminate them.
