Denise Brady
Artist Denise Brady is an important leader in her local community and the director of Tjarlirli and Kaltukatjara Art Centres. She spoke to VAULT about her childhood and how the pandemic affected her life and work.
Image credit: Denise Brady, Waru, Tili, Wild Rolling Fire, 2022, Kaltukatjara (Docker River), Northern Territory, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 182.9 x 304.8 cm. Courtesy the artist and Tjarlirli and Kaltukatjara Art © the artist / Tjarlirli and Kaltukatjara Art
As 2023 began, three of Denise Brady’s paintings hung in the Art Gallery of South Australia. These paintings, which formed part of the recent Tarnanthi exhibition that brought together contemporary art by some of the finest First Nations artists across the continent, were exhibited with immersive audio recordings that captured crackling fire, the steady downpour of rain and the rumble of thunder. Alongside Brady’s detailed paintings, the audio added further dimension to the artist’s reflection on Country and Dreaming, as well as recent events and experiences within her community at Kaltukatjara in the Northern Territory.
One of these painting, Storm (2022), vibrates with activity. Branches of lightning crack across the canvas, animal tracks – emu and camel – cut through fields of white and dark blue dots, a person’s footprints walk into the landscape but do not return. It’s a chaotic and windswept setting, everything caught up in the energetic movement of rain and wind. Within it, the arms of Country and family rise to slow the downpour.
“All them white dots, that’s the cultural land,” explains Brady. “The land, the plants, the sacred sites, everything. The stories, the connection of the family tree. All those things in white dots. And you can see it’s coming up; it’s going around tangling up under this rainfall that is coming down and trying to calm the rain.”... Subscribe to read this article in full
