BORN 1969

REGION Amata

LANGUAGE Pitjantjatjara

Tjungkara Ken was born in Amata (SA) in 1969 and was one of the first young artists to begin working with Tjala Arts (in 1997). Ken said, “I do paintings about my country. That’s ngura: rockholes and the land, the hills and big creek beds. Sometimes I do stories about the Seven Sisters and about country.” She works both as a solo artist and with family, and is one of five sisters who have painted as Ken Sisters Collaborative. Their painting Seven Sisters was awarded the Wynne Prize in 2016.

Ken and her sister Yaritji Young were also profiled at Sydney Contemporary in 2017 where they responded to paintings by Ben Quilty. Of this exchange, Young noted, “What we do share with artists outside the Lands when we have the opportunity to connect is also so very important. We share ideas about colour and movement, about scale and energy. We share our love for painting… Sometimes paintings can talk to each other just like artists talk to each other.” For Tjungkara, the project was about paint on the canvas, about looking at what Quilty was able to achieve with a palette knife and its similarity to the way she does her waka waka (dots). The painting celebrates colour and tells a story that is hers, observing the way colour may highlight, define and create depth and contrast.

Ken paints both her mother’s country (Wingalina), the ngintaka dreaming, and her father’s Apara story. She said, “Now that I know how to do really good paintings, I only paint with punu sticks and not a brush… When we do paintings it’s like looking down from the top, like looking from an aeroplane.”

Ken is part of the Ken Sisters Collaborative (along with Yaritji Young, Freda Brady, Maringka Tunkin and Sandra Ken), who were awarded the Wynne Prize in 2016. She was a finalist in the 2017 Archibald Prize and the 2019 Wynne Prize and is a repeat finalist in the Telstra Award (2017, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2010. She has exhibited widely throughout Australia and her work is represented in collections including Artbank, Art Gallery of South Australia, National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, QAGOMA, and private collections include the Corrigan Collection, Lagerberg Swift Collection, Laverty Collection, Richard and Harriette England Collection.

BORN c. 1956

REGION Pukatja

LANGUAGE Pitjantjatjara

Yaritji Young is a Pitjantjatjara woman from Pukatja, a community within the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands and she now lives at Rocket Bore; a homeland north of Amata. Young is a significant Australian Aboriginal artist and senior law women who is committed to fostering law and culture and this forms a core part of her artistic practice. Most of Young’s paintings are drawn from the Tjala (Honey Ant) Dreaming.

Young also works with her sisters; Freda Brady, Maringka Tunkin, Sandra Ken and Tjungkara Ken and, together, they form the Ken Sisters also known as the Ken Family Collaborative, receiving international attention and winning major awards. In this collaborative the sisters paint together, sometimes simultaneously and sometimes consecutively, on a grounded canvas and, together, they focus on familiar and familial subjects that they share as their birthright.

Young’s parents are Mick Wikilyire and Paniny Mick and she was born in the bush, near a creek, at Pukatja. Little is known of her early life but she attended school in Amata and, it was here, that she first learnt to make baskets, her earliest form of textile work.

As an individual Young is a successful artist and, after many group exhibitions, had her first solo exhibition ‘Yaritji Young: Walytjapitiku Laina – Family Lines’, at the Alcaston Gallery in Melbourne, in 2017; this was followed by two more in 2018 and 2019 respectively at the same gallery. Her individual work is also held in many significant collections including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of South Australia and the Queensland Art Gallery.

In 2018 the sisters won the People’s Choice category at the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award with their six square metre painting ‘Seven Sisters’ which tells the Tjukarpa story about the constellations of the Pleiades (the sisters) and Orion (a lusty or bad man) and the sisters attempts to run away/protect each other.

‘Seven Sisters’ went on to win the 2016 Wynne Prize.