| Summary: | Kurunpa Kunpu is the outcome of a 3-year, cross-cultural design collaboration between Tanya Singer, Errol Evans and Trent Jansen that began when Tanya, Errol and Maruku Arts invited Trent to their homelands at Railway Bore in remote South Australia. The designers Yarned while they worked in Railway Bore and in Thirroul on the New South Wales South Coast, learning from, and about, each other’s unique relationships with Country, family and community. By engaging with their respective cultural practices and traditions, the designers have realised a collection of works that speak to the resilience of both First Nations People and ngura (Country), celebrating the potential for inter-cultural collaboration to embody diverse cultural values and lived experiences. Engaging processes of Deep Listening to each other and Country, the collection is in part a response to climate change experienced by the designers’ communities in remote South Australia and a poignant reminder of the need for environmental responsibility and action. The rapidly warming, drying landscape threatens the lives of community members and the ecosystem and, in turn, connection to Country and culture. Employing motifs of drying, cracked earth and protection, the collection is a powerful visual representation of the critical thresholds in the Earth’s system and the consequences of pushing against those boundaries. Kurunpa Kunpu invites reflection on the distribution of environmental burdens and benefits and the importance of reengaging in Relationality between community, culture and Country.
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