Monsters of Energy
The Tennant Creek Brio’s art isn’t a legible script, a tidy lineage, or an easy metaphor—it’s a rupture, a refusal, a site of resurgence. This story sends us somewhere else, reaching for something that came before or after, looking for what’s out back, round the back of the house, the shed, the art centre, the “outback.”
Everything about him was red. His red snout, the morning red, he dreams red, the red wind, and the land is scraped stiff red by the hooves of his cattle. At dawn red. In this part of Country, the dried-out beauty is red dirt and when its heart beats — our hearts, which are mostly water, beat, because they too are coloured red. For millions of years there were no hooves, no dynamite, no excavators to scrape this land stiff. But they came and there was a red wire that splintered across the sky casting its shadow on the dirt. The world was split in two — our hearts permanently cloven.
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Emily Kam Kngwarray’s art has been claimed, framed, and re-framed—by critics, curators, and institutions alike. But what remains of the singular, personal encounter with her work?
The Tennant Creek Brio’s art isn’t a legible script, a tidy lineage, or an easy metaphor—it’s a rupture, a refusal, a site of resurgence. This story sends us somewhere else, reaching for something that came before or after, looking for what’s out back, round the back of the house, the shed, the art centre, the “outback.”
