Vanessa Inkamala is part of art centre Iltja Ntjarra.
Vanessa was born in 1968 at Ntaria (Hermannsburg), a mission established by German Lutheran missionaries at the end of the 19th century. Vanessa’s grandmother’s brother is Albert Namatjira and she is the niece of award winning artist Ivy Pareroultja’s. Ivy remembers nursing Vanessa and her brother Reinhold Inkamala (also painter at Iltja Ntjarra) in Hermannsburg.
Vanessa currently lives in Alice Springs and paints in the watercolour tradition. She paints the landscape of her ancestors, which is also the country she belongs to.
In her late 20s Vanessa married Fabien, an Eastern Arrernte man, and moved to Santa Teresa, some 80 km South-West of Alice Springs. Though Vanessa was already a skilled artist, she learnt and adopted a new artistic style specific to Santa Teresa, in which she paints spiritual women. The spiritual women who are the subjects of Vanessa’s work are guardians of the land and remain invisible most of the time. Often, they look after a network of waterholes alongside the riverbed. If intruders come stealing some of the country resources such as bush tucker or water, the spiritual women will come out and the offenders will disappear forever.
- University of Technology (UTS), Sydney, NSW
- National Museum Australia (NMA), Canberra, ACT
- Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA), SA
- Art Gallery of NSW (AGNSW), Sydney, NSW
- Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Brisbane, QLD
- Flinders University Art Museum (FUMA), Adelaide SA
Expositions, florilège / Selected exhibitions
2021 Painting Now – Peindre aujourd’hui en terres aborigènes, IDAIA, Le Havre, France
2021 Peindre sa Culture – Artistes Aborigènes Contemporains, IDAIA, Le Havre, France
2021 Arrkurla nakala kurunga lyaata-ntama (Before and Now), South Australian Museum, Adelaide, SA
2020 Homeless on my Homeland, NIRIN 22nd Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, NSW
2019 Tjina Nurna-ka, Pmarra Nurn-kanha, Itla Itla Nurn-kanha (Our family, our country, our legacy), Flinders University Art Museum, Adelaide, SA
2019 The National, AGNSW, Sydney, NSW
2017 What if this photograph is by Albert Namatjira?, Art Gallery of SA, Adelaide, SA
2017 Cicada Press Collection, Tarnanthi, AGSA, SA
SOURCE: Ernabella Arts.