The work of Indigenous artist Betty Kuntiwa Pumani will be celebrated in the recently revealed Bundanon 2025 Season 2 exhibition program.
Running from June 28 to October 5, the exhibitions featuring the art of Pumani and David Sequeira spotlight significant bodies of work made over several years alongside new commissions, offering different perspectives on contemporary practice.
In her first major museum survey, Pumani, a renowned Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands artist, will present a survey of 15 works spanning 2012 to the present day.
Titled maḻatja-maḻatja (those who come after) and curated by Bundanon chief executive Rachel Kent in collaboration with the artist and Mimili Maku Arts, the exhibition will encompass a major new three-part painting, 'Antara' (2025), created especially for Bundanon.
The new commission will be presented alongside major loans from public and private collections including National Gallery of Australia, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and Bendigo Art Gallery, contextualised by early works drawn from the Mimili Maku Arts Cultural Collection, shown publicly for the first time.
"Betty Kuntiwa Pumani is a visionary artistic and cultural leader, her paintings inextricably linked to her mother's Country, Antara, on Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. It was a great honour to work with Betty on her major commission for 'The National' – her largest and most ambitious work, spanning ten meters in length – in 2020; and now, five years later, to bring her art to Bundanon for her first major museum survey," said Kent.
"Betty has created a new triptych for Bundanon, its stippled white colouration capturing the tonal shift in her recent practice and the maku storyline which informs her wider practice. Works by her mother, sister and daughter reflect the enduring power of women's practice and intergenerational knowledge-sharing through the exhibition."
Betty Kuntiwa Pumani, Antara 2025, synthetic polymer paint on linen, Mimili Maku Arts © The Artist, Mimili Maku Arts, SA. Image, courtesy of the artist and Mimili Maku Arts © Betty Kuntiwa Pumani/Copyright Agency, 2025. (Image: supplied)
Pumani's paintings reveal a shimmering landscape of red earth, bright blue waterholes and stippled white tobacco flowers. They represent Antara, her mother's Country in the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in north-western South Australia, and Tjukurpa storylines centred on maku, the witchetty grub.
Matrilineal connections inform Pumani's painting practice, with stories passed down through generations in the depiction of Antara. Reflecting this lineage, four works within the exhibition by the artist's mother, Kunmanara (Milatjari) Pumani and sister, Kunmanara (Ngupulya) Pumani, highlight the importance of family connection and intergenerational storytelling.
Continuing this legacy, a major collaborative work, 'Antara' (2020), by the artist and her daughter, Marina Pumani Brown, is also featured. Through their distinctive approaches to colour, a shared language is revealed in the work which represents one of several collaborations by mother and daughter over a two-year period. These strong matrilineal threads resonate with the exhibition's title – a Pitjantjatjara term meaning 'those who come after' – carrying the understanding that what we do now already belongs to future generations, connecting ancestral past with the future, through ongoing care for Country and culture.
Betty Kuntiwa Pumani, Antara 2020, synthetic polymer paint on linen, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, purchased with funds provided by the MCAFoundation, 2021, image courtesy the artist, Mimili Maku Arts and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia © Betty Kuntiwa Pumani/Copyright Agency, 2025. (Image: Jessica Maurer)
When speaking on her new works featured in the exhibition, the talented artist said that both her and her daughters paint to educate and inform today's younger generations.
"We were taught by my mother. My daughters and I paint our Dreaming to teach our younger generation, so that when they are older, they can know everything. When we are old, they will hold onto that knowledge and keep it strong in their paintings, in our family," she said.
Pumani's Bundanon survey is expanded by a new monographic publication with interpretative essays, interviews in Pitjantjatjara language by the artist, colour reproductions of exhibited works and detailed documentation of her new commission.
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