Michael Stitfold Author

Hetti Kemarre Perkins, daughter of Aboriginal rights activist Charles Perkins, is an Arrernte and Kalkadoon art curator and writer. From 1989 until 2011 Perkins worked at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney), including thirteen years as senior curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art. She co-organised the Australian entry for the 1997 Venice Biennale. In 2010, she organised the project “art + soul: a journey into the world of Aboriginal art”, which incorporated a significant exhibition, an accompanying book and a three-part television documentary made by ABC Television. Hetti Kemarre Perkins has organised several major exhibitions and projects, as well as co-organising a major retrospective of Emily Kam Kngwarray’s oeuvre held at the National Gallery of Australia in 2023/2024. Georges Petitjean is an art historian whose PhD thesis at La Trobe University in Melbourne examined the art of the Western Desert. He has lived and worked in Australia for many years and has closely followed the work of many artists in central Australia and in the Kimberley since 1992. He was curator of the Aboriginal Art Museum Utrecht (AAMU), Netherlands, from 2005 to 2017, when he was appointed curator of the Collection Bérengère Primat. Georges Petitjean’s main area of interest is the trajectory Australian Aboriginal art has followed from its origins to the world of international contemporary art. He has acted as a consultant or organiser for numerous Aboriginal art exhibitions in Europe and Australia, and continues to write about Aboriginal art and culture. Michael Stitfold was a field officer for Papunya Tula Artists in the Communities of Kintore and Kiwirrkurra between 2002 and 2004. In 2005 he was appointed manager of Kayili Artists, an art centre located in Patjarr, a small Aboriginal Community in a remote part of the Gibson Desert in Western Australia. While there, he worked with Jackie Kurltjunyintja Giles Tjapaltjarri and travelled with him to Sydney in 2009. From 2012 until 2020, he worked with Munupi Arts in the Tiwi Islands and was briefly involved with the Tennant Creek Brio (Nyinkka Nyunyu Arts and Cultural Centre). Through these experiences he gained extensive knowledge about managing art centres in remote Communities, acting as an intermediary between the artists and the broader art world. He has also acted as manager for Injalak Arts in northwest Arnhem Land.