Nunami Sculthorpe-Green

Category: Portfolio

  • Takila Milaythina-ti

    Takila Milaythina-ti

    In Future Country: Country Road x NGV First Nations Commissions

    Mentored by Aunty Lola Greeno

    Ian Potter Centre, Federation Square, National Gallery of Victoria (acquisitive commission)

    Shell stringing is a cultural practice passed down to us from our ancestral grandmothers and carried through our families. Marina shell necklaces have become emblematic of our community and culture – representative of the cultural knowledge that ties us to our ancestors and our land.

    Due to the violent dispossession of our ancestors from our land, our community today is spread across Lutruwita and beyond. But our culture will always remain grounded in our home country – as we continue to push for its return to Aboriginal ownership.

    This work represents the story of our people: we are present here through our cultural forms and through our country itself. Each ceramic shell in this work is glazed only with materials harvested from our ancestral lands. Set in patterns inspired by the tides, the arrangement symbolises our journeys away from and back to our home country – throughout our lives and across generations. Their larger-than-life scale alludes to the profound significance of this form within our culture.

    The survival of the practice of shell stringing faces serious threats from industry, climate instability, and the declining health of our oceans. Ceramic shells in this work serve as stand-ins for an increasingly rare cultural resource.

    NGV-62
    • c3d956d8995fb04174d5af0721b9a519
    • 23b7f5bc68eb4f01e7b01ad7879b4a9d
  • Truth-Telling at Wybalenna

    Truth-Telling at Wybalenna

    As part of the Truth-Telling at Wybalenna project I was commissioned by the Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania to write the content for a new truth-telling exhibition inside the Chapel at Wybalenna. This involved researching and writing the story of this significant site on behalf of our community. There is an audio tour to accompany the written interpretation. More information visit the Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania

    IMG_6581
  • Rayakana Milaythina

    Rayakana Milaythina

    raykana milaythina is a two-year project that explores Palawa cultural relationship with the seasons and cycles of our country.

    This project has been supported by Creative Australia, Arts Tasmania, the Regional Arts Fund and Ten Days on the Island.
    For more information see: In Development

    Project Team
    Nunami Sculthorpe-Green – Lead Artist
    Uncle Jim Everett / Puralia Meenamatta – Project Consulting Elder
    Aunty Lola Greeno – Project Consulting ElderProducer: Annette Downs
    Armie Sungvaribud – Ceramic Mentor and creative collaborator
    Ben Richardson – Ceramic Mentor
    Takani Clark – Lead Filmmaker
    Troy Melville – Wukalina residency film content and on-site ceramic mentor

    IMG_5279
    IMG_3064
  • mumirimina country

    mumirimina country

    Curated by Jade Ervine as part of SITE: Richmond, an exhibition coinciding with the Bicentenary of the town of Richmond, Tasmania
    Ochre, Charcoal and Beeswax frottage on washi paper
    September 2024
    Supported by Clarence Arts and Events

    The invasion and subsequent colonisation of Lutruwita/Tasmania coincides with the absence of the Mumirimina people from this landscape.
    This absence is not a coincidence but a consequence.

    The founding of Richmond ultimately represents the loss of the Mumirimina people. 


    For this work, I did not want to focus on the very dark and violent history present here: The war for this country or the extent of the genocidal regime enacted against our people that has altered our people, culture, and country forever.

    Instead, this work is a reflection on the thousands of years of life and care that this landscape has seen. 
    The memory of Mumirimina people remains embedded in this landscape. The abundant country here is part of their legacy. This country continues to hold our people, still we can draw from it and the stories that remain here. 

    A stone tool is made by one person, carried with them on their journeys across country and then left behind where it will be picked up by another or left within the landscape.


    Thousands of stone tools have been found across Mumirimina country. Still more are found every year. 
    Thousands of journeys, thousands of people, thousands of stories, for thousands of years. These tools are tangible physical reminders of Mumrimina people in this landscape.

    ​

    This work features the outlines of real stone tools, each one unique, each one held by Mumirimina country. The marks are made by imprinting the tools into the paper using charcoal and ochre pigments that I have collected on my own journeys across our country.

    If each stone tool represented a bicentenary, this work still could not represent the depth of the Mumarimina story here.

  • Thiyana

    Thiyana

    Thiyana

    Exhibited at Sawtooth ARI, Launceston
    September 2024
    Includes pit-fired native clays, charcoal, ochre as well as paperbark, wallaby fur and skin, invasive bulrush


  • Five Grindstones

    Five Grindstones

    Soil Propositions, group show with Grace Gamage and lead artist Lucy Bleach
    Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens
    December 2023
    Exhibition Information: Contemporary Art Tasmania: Soil Propositions

    Our land holds our stories.
    Soil becomes the keeper of memory.
    Every ancestor, all material and spiritual aspect of our culture, enacted here over unending generations,
    are part of what this soil holds.

    Even in extremely colonised landscapes
    a colonial garden, a landscape transformed.
    Designed in opposition to the true nature of the place.
    Even here, there remains memory and story for us.

    Archaeological notes from excavations of the gardens, speak of five grindstones. 
    Taken from this landscape.
    Grindstones that speak to this place as one witness
    to generations of ceremony and life.
    A living place shaped by our old people.

    With layers of shell, right down deep.
    Serving as reminders.
    Markers to the memory of this living place.
    An oak tree, planted atop, draws nourishment from shell,
    allowing it grow tall
    as its roots crush site, our stories.

    If the old oak tree can find nourishment here,
    well so can we.
    Our roots are deep enough to allow reconnection and recollection always.

    In this place of hurt and superimposed European seasons,
    we too can draw from what remains,
    Draw from what our old people left for us here.
    Draw from the soil what we need to sustain us.

    Here we can still find a safe and private space
    to connect to the truth of this landscape.
    The work on display is not the process but the remnants,
    the evidence of something that has already taken place.

  • It is palawa country after all

    It is palawa country after all

    Writing commissioned by MONA for Forest Economics Congress 2023
    Curated by Willoh Weiland
    Recorded at Frying Pan Studios.
    Mixed by Jethro Pickett
    Originally performed live at Myrtle Falls with Violinist Eric Avery
    Audio played throughout the event

    1. In the Forest
    2. On the Water
    3. Underground
    4. While Discussing
    Poem Text

  • Country Calling

    Country Calling

    March 2024
    piyura kitina & Bedlam Walls
    Public art instillation
    Presented by Constance ARI in collaboration with the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre

    This work was created to reunite a cultural landscape.

    A landscape that has been divided into sites and parcels.

    A landscape still connected by story.

    Stories told, stories left. Stories of family, community and gathering. Of deep bags and freshwater to follow. Of fires and shells up the hill. Stories of quarries, tools, hunting and kangaroo.

    Mumarimina stories that palawa still tell.

    Palawa stories that continue.

    There are chimes at both piyura kitina and Bedlam walls. The chimes bear the mark of the landscape. Imprinted with plant, stone, ash and earth.

    The chimes made from one place, brought to the other.

    Hear piyura kitina and bedlam walls reunited with sound.

    They sound for each other and they sound together

    Hear in the chiming the story of one landscape, one journey across mumarimina country made many times.

    NSG - Country Calling - 155
    NSG - Country Calling - 390
  • Lutruwita: All Roads Lead To Home

    Lutruwita: All Roads Lead To Home

    February 2023
    Paint and Paper
    Curated by Takani Clark
    Moonah Arts Centre
    Collaborator – Joshua Santospirito https://www.joshuasantospirito.com/

    In collaboration with Joshua Santospirito.

    A mural focused on true names for country. A map of lutruwita was created with paint and collage on the wall of the Moonah Art Centre.


    Reminiscent of colonial landscape art created to promote free settler land grants, the collage consisted of tourism promotional material designed to highlight the landscapes of lutruwita for commercial gain while overlooking the true culture and language of the island.


    Joshua Santospirito’s illustrations emanate from the collage and feature native plants and animals with palawa kani names underneath.

    The artwork was completed by inviting Tasmanian Aboriginal community to black out the map and insert the true names for places – through a language lesson led by the palawa kani language program.

  • Paliti Milaythina-ti

    Paliti Milaythina-ti

    Paliti Milaythina-ti

    Curator: Alexandra Hullah
    Shown at Contemporary Art Tasmania
    September 2022

    Materials:
    earthenware clay, terra cotta, grass fibers, underglaze pigment and glaze.

    Exhibition Information: Contemporary Art Tasmania
    Exhibition Review: Arts Hub – Jade Irvine

    Our country – lutruwita – is our home. 
    It is our land from which we draw our connection and our culture. 
    This country holds our stories, and this country holds us. It is where we will return to rest.

    These three vessels each represent a place of connection.


    Each a place we have back for our people. Land we again manage ourselves. 
    These are places in which our peoples’ solid roots go down very deep and continue to radiate peace and strength from which we may draw.


    All of lutruwita is Aboriginal land and all of it is sacred.
    But these areas hold special stories for our community.
    Each of these place does have a story marked by invasion, but our people’s stories continue around it.

    putalina holds story of our people across so many times. It has always been a special place. The shells of our old people line the beach, they walked along the water as we do.


    Putalina was also the place the colony held 47 of our people trapped as prisoners, my ancestors included. 
    It was the first place our people reoccupied and one of the first we won back and performed ceremony for our old people. Putalina is also one of the first places we reintroduced fire to care for country. Now it is a place that carries all these stories – it is where we continue to celebrate our sovereignty and our community every year.

    preminghana has our old peoples’ stories carved in rock across the coastline. Many have been covered up with sand and some pieces cut away and stolen. But our stories still remain etched into the earth. Preminghana is ours to take care of, to walk the beach, to gather and celebrate with our families. When I think of preminghana, I think of ceremony and community. I remember the delicious white currants that grow in abundance on the way down to the beach.

    larapuna is our homeland, an area we tie back to and hold so close to us. But one not completely our own yet. To me, larapuna is sandy beaches, fire, and stars. The most beautiful place in the world to me. Here I think of my mum, my daughter and our ancestors, women born from this place who have carried us through. There are huge amounts of kunzea growing wild all around larapuna, the smell surrounds you as you walk