Kwatja Etathaka / Living Water
Artists: Lindy Brodie, Selma Nunay Coultard, Dianne Inkamala, Dellina Inkamala, Delray Inkamala, Vanessa Inkamala
Partner: Iltja Ntjarra (Many Hands) Art Centre
Opening: Thursday 27 March at 6 pm
Exhibition: 22 March to 26 April 2025
Speakers: Curator Marisa Maher and artists Vanessa Inkamala and Kathy Inkamala
Artists working at lltja Ntjarra (Many Hands) studio in Mparntwe/Alice Springs command one of our major landscape traditions: the Hermansburg watercolour school of Central Australia. The brilliant Western Aranda artist Albert Namatjira and his kin began the school in the late 1930s and encoded the Western landscape sublime with an overlaid map of significant sites, living waters and ancestral storylines. The subtle overlay is sometimes described as a re-claiming or re-appropriation of stolen country.
For the exhibition Kwatja Etathaka/Living Water the artists summon their resonant landscape tradition to create decisive contemporary installations: dramatic watercolours on metal sit beside delicate botanical miniatures and etherial watercolours rendered and baked into glass. The glassworks combine the elemental concepts of regeneration — water and fire.
Kwatja Etathaka/Living Water signals a crisis threatening the foundations of the sublime landscape and its ecology. Across the Western Desert Aboriginal people use the term ‘living water’ to describe water sources, including rock holes and soakage waters that are fed by underground springs. The path of these springs was created by the ancestral beings. Living waters, principally the artesian or ground water systems, are dropping and often contaminated. In most remote communities like the former Lutheran Mission of Hermansburg/Ntaria some 100 kilometres west of Mparntwe, tap water is dirty, smelly and bad tasting and compromises health and hygiene.
In a series of ground-breaking exhibitions and place-making works, the artists have conceptualised the equity gap and gaps in the rights of traditional owners. In 1976 when Federal Parliament passed the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act, the legislation failed to include water rights. Aquifers are now a front-line in Northern Australia’s extraction wars.
Painting in watercolour over large metal signs, senior artists Selma Coultard and Vanessa Inkamala, who created the Living Water title, call-out for safe drinking water for remote communities. Selma Coulthard’s position is steadfast: “In ‘Reclaim Our Water’ I have painted the area between Urrampinyi (Tempe Downs) and Running Waters. Rightful Traditional Owners of water sources are sometimes pushed out of their own traditional land. The Coulthard family for instance are traditional owners of this land and water. My family has always looked after the land and its water, I go back five generations. It’s important that we maintain control over our water sources.”
Kwatja Etathaka/Living Water exhibition includes a salon-style collection of delicate botanical paintings that form a catalogue of ancient medicinal plants and foods. Their importance was documented in the exhibition The Art of Healing: Australian Indigenous Bush Medicine, at Melbourne University Medical Museum in 2012. These specimens are disappearing for complex reasons: mining and fracking threaten precious ground water and the impact of feral species — especially smothering buffel grass — puts this unique biodiversity at risk.
The idea of a botanical scriptorium emerged in 2023 in response to an invitation to develop an exhibition for Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Arts in Adelaide. After spending time on country, collecting plants and creating drawings and paintings of traditional plants, flowers and seeds the women combined these with Western Aranda plant names for the exhibition Arrpmarnintja / Creation from the Beginning. This inspired the works on show where text excerpts accompanying the watercolours by featured artists Dianne Inkamala and Dellina Inkamala read Arrkapa/Desert oak, Inarnta/Bean tree, Para/River red gum, Pangkurra/Dogwood tree and so forth. The works are shown beside museum-like “actual” examples. As a gentler reply to “the colonial project” a collective artist statement accompanies both whimsical installations: “Intrusions and uniforms may change, but Tjina Nurna-ka, Pmarra Nurn-kanha, Itla Itla Nurn-kanha / Our family, our country, our legacy, does not.” Tarnanthi, 2023.
Kwatja Etathaka/Living Water introduces new works on glass, a collaboration with Canberra Glassworks (begun late 2024 and destined for Tarnanthi in Adelaide later this year). In the glassworks sacred landscapes shimmer mirage-like in glass. The concepts of regeneration — water and fire — signal a defence of water and Country as sources of life, not just resources to be exploited.
Kwatja Etathaka/Living Water sits in a series of Caring for Country exhibitions by Iltja Ntajra named by the artists as social commentary. Often the artists confront contemporary issues like homelessness and health and mining (fracking) and water contamination. Standouts are installations for recent Sydney Biennials: ‘Homeless in my Homeland’ in 2020 and ‘Traditional Owners (TOs) Only’ in 2022 and two previous exhibitions at The Cross Art Projects: One too many, 2022 and Particulate Matter: A fossil free future? 2020.
Reclaim Our Water: The Story So Far
The Northern Territory drinking water system privileges urban (predominantly non-Indigenous) populations. The most recent data (2022) shows 63 out of 72 remote communities supplied by the government-owned Power and Water Corporation received water that does not meet Australian Drinking Water standards and compromises the viability of remote communities.[1]
Compounding the failure in the Northern Territory water is leased to extractors (irrigators and miners) for free and extraction entitlements (many on former pastoral leases) are being expanded by under regional “water allocation plans” that vastly increase potential extraction from underground aquifers. Because they are free, they are unmonitored.
The water security campaigns by several remote Territory communities have succeeded in small but important measure. Recently the Federal Government initiated a Better Bores for Communities program to improve water supply and quality in 7 communities and expanding water supply in 3 others. This includes installing essential equipment to connect new water sources in the Wugularr, Haasts Bluff and Ntaria (Hermannsburg). But bores are just a temporary fix.
As the Federal Minister for the Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek, said earlier in 2025: “Every Australian should be able to drink water from the tap, no matter where they live”. This commitment is embedded now in the National Water Plan with state and territory agreements. In the Territory this includes the objective to Close the Gap on water security. First Peoples stakeholders are still seeking joint decision-making on planning and management to take full account of the social, cultural, spiritual, and environmental impacts of water allocation and land clearing across catchments.
However as a rogue state, the Territory’s new ruling Country National Party recently passed legislation for a ‘Territory Coordinator’, an ex-gas executive of INPEX. The Coordinator and the Chief Minister now have far-reaching powers to remove scrutiny and cut safeguards. Likely to be fast tracked is fracking in the Beetaloo Basin and the Singleton Station groundwater licence near Ali Curung. The government haa systematically defunded environmental organisations like Arid Lands Environment Centre, Environment Centre NT and the Environmental Defender’s Office. The NT’s water, environment and people are in danger.
— Jo Holder, Director
Notes
- Central Land Council, National Water Reform 2024, Submission to the Productivity Commission, pp 24-25. From Joint Land Council Resolution, Barunga 7 June 2023. Homelands are not supplied by government as they are not designated “townships”.
Selma Nunay Coulthard, RECLAIM OUR WATER, 2023, watercolour on metal, 100 x 99.5 cm (#53-23)
“In ‘Reclaim Our Water’ I have painted the area between Urrampinyi (Tempe Downs) and Running Waters. Rightful Traditional Owners of water sources are sometimes pushed out of their own traditional land. The Coulthard family for instance are traditional owners of this land and water. My family has always looked after the land and its water, I go back five generations. It’s important that we maintain control over our water sources.” — Selma Nunay Coulthard
Vanessa Inkamala, Cycle Reclaim Our Water, 2023, watercolour on metal, 100 x 99 cm (#123-23)
“This work shows Yapulpa/Glen Helen Gorge after the rain, when the water is good to drink. Fish come, like bony brim, along with new plants. It is a never ending living water fed by a natural spring. Through the gorge you can see Kwarre Tnemaye or ‘Woman Standing’ (aka The Organ Pipes) — Vanessa Inkamala
Vanessa Inkamala, 4 TO’S ONLY, 2021, watercolour on metal, 23 x 100 cm (#149-21)
Selma Nunay Coulthard, Police Brutality (Neighbourhood Watch), 2023, watercolour on metal, 45 x 30 cm (#29-23)
(L) Selma Nunay Coulthard, RECLAIM OUR WATER, 2023, watercolour on metal, 100 x 99.5 cm (#53-23) (R) Vanessa Inkamala, Cycle Reclaim Our Water, 2023, watercolour on metal, 100 x 99 cm (#123-23)
Delina Inkamala, Jangal, 2024, glasswork, 20 x 30 cm (#109-24)
Vanessa Inkamala, Tjoritja (West MacDonnell Ranges), 2024, 20 x 30 cm, (#107-24)
Selma Nunay Coulthard, Urrampinyi (Tempe Downs), 2024, glasswork, 20 x 30 cm, (#108-24)
Kwatja Etathaka/Living Water, installation view. Photography: Silversalt.
Above: Vanessa Inkamala, Gum Trees, glass work, 2024, 24 x 26 cm (#104-24)
Vanessa Inkamala, Tjoritja (West MacDonnell Ranges), NT, 2024, glasswork, 12 x 28 cm (2 parts) (#110-24)
Dellina Inkamala, Rutjipma (Mt Sonder), NT, 2024, glasswork, 20 x 27 cm (#106-24)
Dellina Inkamala, Rutjipma (Mt Sonder), NT, 2024, glasswork, 25 x 35 cm (#103-24)
Selma Nunay Coulthard, Tjoritja (West MacDonnell Ranges), NT, 2024, glasswork, 25 x 45 cm (#102-24)
Vanessa Inkamala, Tjoritja (West MacDonnell Ranges), NT, 2024, glasswork, 24 x 45 cm (#101-24)
(L to R): Dellina Inkamala, Katjirra – Desert Raisin, 2023, watercolour on paper, 52.5 x 36.5 cm (#92-23). Delray Inkamala, Inarnta, Arrkanka, Ngalta, 2023, watercolour on paper, 38 x 54 cm (#160-23). Dianne Inkamala, Arrkapa – Desert Oak Seed Pod, 2023, watercolour on paper, 53.5 x 36 cm (#87-23). Delray Inkamala, Blue Mallee Ihilpa Epungkara, 2023, watercolour on paper, 33 x 52 cm (#94-23.
Assorted works, watercolours on paper, installation view. Photography: Silversalt.
Dianne Inkamala, Seeds, 2022, watercolour on paper, 17 x 27 cm (#538-22)
Dianne Inkamala, Seeds, 2022, watercolour on paper, 17 x 25 cm (#539-22)
About Iltja Ntjarra
The Aboriginal-governed art centre Iltja Ntjarra (Many Hands) in Mparntwe/Alice Springs was established in 2003, to honour the heritage of Albert Namatjira and his peers. From the movement’s first exhibition in the late 1930s by Albert Namatjira and Herbert Raberaba, also from Hermannsburg, the artists indicated their works held special meanings. The artists’ heartland is Ntaria (Hermannsburg a former Lutheran Mission) located over 100 kilometres to the west of Mparntwe/Alice Springs at a site along a southern branch of Tjoritja (the Western MacDonnell Ranges). The Hermansburg/Ntaria school now embraces film, performance (with BigHeart), public art, publishing (The Life and Times of Albert Namatjira, a biography by Ken McGregor) and legal action notably the successful action to reclaim the Namatjira copyright. In Mparntwe/Alice Springs the artists’ participation in annual selective events such as Parrtjima. A Festival in Light and DesertMob at the Araluen Centre is keenly anticipated.
About the Artists
Lindy Brodie (b.1973, Alyawarr, Waramungu. Community, Tennant Creek): is a founding artist at Tartukula studio in the Barkly region and sometimes works at Iltja Ntjarra. Brodie’s vividly coloured paintings and drawings of landscapes and interiors include painstaking details that indicate human presence and activity.
Selma Coulthard Nunay (b.1954, speaks Luritja, Arrente, Western Aranda): grew up in Ntaria/Hermannsburg and went to school with artist Ivy Pareroultja. Watching the Namatjira brothers paint in inspired her to be an artist. She says: “I usually try and remember the landscape and the way the colours change in different times of the day, sometimes I see purple, orange and red. My colours are always true to my country.” She paints – Urrampinyi (Tempe Downs), the oasis in the Desert at Urrampinyi, running Waters at Irrmakara and their spiritual keepers and often depicts women’s ceremonial sites.
Dellina Inkamala (b.1984, Western Aranda): lives and works Mparntwe. Delllina Inkamala is the daughter of Raelene Inkamala who is Kathy Inkamala’s older sister, and Hillary Pareroultja who is Hubert Pareroultja’s younger brother. Dellina’s tutors are auntie Kathy Inkamala and uncle Hubert Pareroultja. Dellina participated in Homeless on my Homeland, NIRIN 22nd Biennale of Sydney, 2020 and an associated watercolour workshop at The Cross Art Projects.
Dianne Inkamala (b.1971, Western Aranda): is sister to Vanessa Inkamala and to her brother Reinhold Inkamala both respected painters at the art centre.
Vanessa Inkamala (b. 1968): grew up at Ntaria (Hermannsburg). Her grandmother’s brother is Albert Namatjira. She is the niece of award-winning artist Ivy Pareroultja who nursed Vanessa and her brother Reinhold Inkamala, both painters.
Marisa Maher: is a Western Aranda woman and Iltja Ntjarra’s assistant manager where she has curated over twenty exhibitions since 2014. In 2023 She curated the installation for Institute of Economic Botany in Adelaide Botanical Gardens part of Tarnanthi, Art Gallery of South Australia.
Acknowledgements
At Iltja Ntjara: Iris Bendor, Marisa Maher, Tyler Arnold, Selma Coultard and Canberra Glassworks, Aimee Frodsham. At ALEC Alex Vaughan. At The Cross Art Projects: Belle Blau, Intern Leyi Xia (Sydney University), Daniel Schepis and Phillip Boulten. Photography: Silversalt. Concept by Selma Coultard. We pay our respect to Gadigal people and all First Nations people globally and stand in solidarity.
