Announcing Kieren Karritpul

Tolarno Galleries is delighted to announce representation of Kieren Karritpul (b. 1994), a Ngen’giwumirri artist who lives in the small community of Nauiyu (Daly River) southwest of Darwin.

A 2021 Ramsay Art Prize finalist, Karritpul won the inaugural Youth Award at the 2014 Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. In 2020 he won the National Indigenous Fashion Award for Textile Design, resulting in a collaboration with Country Road Homewares.

As a Ngen’giwumirri man, Karritpul is not permitted to weave, instead he paints magnified views of woven objects and fibres. Weaving Myself: the Landscape and the Land, on view until 22 August at @agsa.adelaide as part of the Ramsay Art Prize 2021 exhibition, was painted using two brushes, one made with his own hair. He uses the weaving process as a visual metaphor for land and landscape. The painting is a magnified view of the woven surface that stands for the breathing lands of his Country. Karritpul feels he was born woven into the land. Using repetition and line he creates a surface that moves like human breath.

Tolarno Galleries will present a Kieren Karritpul solo exhibition in 2022.

image: Kieren Karritpul with his paintingWeaving Myself: the Landscape and the Land. Photo by Saul Steed, courtesy Art Gallery of South Australia.