Introduction -
Emma Stuart - Inside the Tjorita

Emma Stuart is a multi-disciplinary artist that has lived and worked in Australia and Internationally throughout her her artistic career. Following an extended period of time in Europe between 2011-2014 Stuart returned to Australia with an insatiable desire to see and experience living in remote ‘Outback’ Australia and so instead of simply returning to the metropolis of Melbourne she moved to and has been residing in Mparntwe, Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory. In this time Stuart’s artistic focus has been gripped by Arrernte country’s unique natural environment and evocative landscapes. Drawn to the liminal shift that takes place as a day transitions to night and night to day, Stuart’s latest series of works in Inside the Tjoritja capture the delicate shift between light and shade, between what is revealed and what is hidden, between the point of immediate attention as well as distorted peripheries. Instead of focusing on broad vistas typically depicted by central Australian landscape painters, Stuart presents us with paintings that have us at eye level within the bush, up close and in view of the ‘personalities’ of individual trees and their journeys though the different seasons and conditions of Australia’s desert interior climate. In recent years Stuart has created a number of series of works based on various areas around Mparntwe including Alice Springs telegraph station walk, Emily Gap, Honey moon Gap, and in this, her most recent body of work, the West MacDonnell National park, ‘Tjoritja’.