Press Release
CASSANDRA BIRD is delighted to present, Our Father’s Story, Our Mother’s Story, an exhibition bringing together the work of Sylvia Ken, Tjungkara Ken and Teresa Baker, three leading artists from the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands - marking their Sydney debut with CASSANDRA BIRD.
Grounded in Country, kinship and the transmission of Tjukurpa, the practices of these artists are shaped by lived experience and inherited cultural authority. While each artist paints from her own lineage and perspective, the exhibition reveals shared commitments to story, place and continuity across generations.
Painting is presented here as both cultural practice and contemporary expression. The works are not illustrative depictions of landscape or narrative, but acts of knowledge-holding, articulating responsibility to Country, to family and to ancestral law. Through distinctive approaches to colour, rhythm and composition, each artist asserts a deep and enduring connection to land and story.
Together, ‘Our Father’s Story, Our Mother’s Story’ forms a powerful dialogue about inheritance, continuity and cultural presence. Across generations, Sylvia Ken, Tjungkara Ken and Teresa Baker,affirm painting as a living, evolving practice, one that sustains memory, transmits knowledge and asserts the ongoing relevance of Anangu cultural systems within contemporary Australian art.
