I am a writer, poet, academic and visual artist of Arrernte, Chinese and Anglo-Celtic descent. My Father was born at Hookey’s Waterhole south-west of Oodnadatta, and my Grandmother came from Charlotte Waters on the Larapinta (Finke River). Her first languages were Alyerntarrpe and Pertame. I am Kemarre Skin, and my totem is the Mulga, or King Brown snake. 

 

My textile works are inspired by my Father’s and Grandmother’s country, and use multiple layers of ‘speaking’, poetry in tracks and poetry graphics inscribing our Ancestral connections to land, waterholes, rivers and place, and the flora and fauna associated with those places. Underlying them are references to spirituality, changed and changing socio-cultural landscapes, and the passage of inheritance of all of these through generations.

 

I use screen prints, hand inscriptions, hand painting and collage in a variety of media to reflect the multiliteracies traditional people use in ‘reading’ and expressing the landscapes we collectively inhabit, physical, social, cultural and spiritual. The Mother-Skin Series of works began in 2004 and is ongoing. It is based on the concept that each piece is a strip torn from the skin of the earth, hence the title Mother-Skin Series. There is a traditional story that says everything on the land, people, animals, rivers, mountains, rocks and flora, are part of the living, breathing skin of the earth which nurtures us as a Mother nurtures her child. The repeating motif in these works is the Women’s Ancestral Hand, denoting Creation, undying presence, and Grandmother’s Law, the matriarchal passage of knowledge from generation to generation. I use my poetry to inscribe  the changed and changing layers of human action upon the land.

 

My photography is also taken through a cultural lens, aerial photographs of my Grandmother’s and Father’s country, and other works which reflect the enduring and spiritual dimensions of a natural world people pass unseeing, and which have sustained the physical, psychological and spiritual well-being of Indigenous people since time immemorial. My lino-cuts, woodblocks and glass painting are alternative media which allow me to express and further explore the same themes through different artistic techniques which present their own visual lexicon.

 

I have a BA (Visual Arts), Canberra School of Art; Certificate IV Indigenous Fashion and Art, Canberra Institute of Technology; a Certificate IV (Printmaking), Charles Darwin University; and a BA (Hons), ANU. My work has been shown in over 50 exhibitions since 1985, and is held in multiple private collections.

 

Jenni Kemarre Martiniello

 

 

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