ACCA presents First Nations art collective Tennant Creek Brio

A new exhibition by Indigenous art collective Tennant Creek Brio is opening at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) in September. 

Fusing First Nations cultural traditions, the industrial materiality of the mining industry, and regional and global art influences, the Tennant Creek Brio: Juparnta Ngattu Minjinypa Iconocrisis exhibition will run from Saturday, September 21 to Sunday, November 17. 

The exhibition’s opening will be celebrated with a smoking ceremony, artist talks and live music by Eleanor JawurIngali Dixon at a free event in the ACCA Gallery and Courtyard on September 21. 

Tennant Creek Brio, whose members live and work in Warumungu Country, use salvaged materials such as oil barrels, car bonnets, solar panels, poker machines, television screens and geological maps from an abandoned mine, on which they reinscribe their experiences and cultural identity.

Presenting works that have been created over nearly a decade, the Juparnta Ngattu Minjinypa Iconocrisis exhibition is a critique on colonial extraction, capitalism and the subsequent social, cultural and political complexities and negotiations that stem from this. It stresses an urgent need for truth-telling, future thinking, collectivity and action.

The group emerged from a men’s outreach and art therapy program in 2016 at Anyinginyi Health Aboriginal Corporation in Tennant Creek.

Tennant Brio consists of seven artists: Fabian Brown Japaljarri, Lindsay Nelson Jakamarra, Rupert Betheras, Joseph Williams Jangarrayi, Jimmy Frank Juppurla, Clifford Thompson Japaljarri and Marcus Camphoo Kemarre.

Their work has been exhibited at major art events around Australia, including the 22nd Biennale of Sydney in 2020 and the Melbourne Art Fair in 2022. •