407-25AS Adelaide Studio, 28 x 55 x 7cm, Underglaze on Porcelain
Myarn Alden is a Kija, Jaru and Ngarti woman from the East Kimberly, Halls Creek, Kununurra and Fitzroy Crossing. Relocating to Adelaide for schooling since 2020, Myarn is both a practising artist and a Studio/Gallery Assistant at the APY Art Centre Collective in Adelaide.
Myarn was taught how to paint as a young child by her Kumputu (Great Grandmother) Biddy Timbinah, a Jaru, Walmajarri, and Ngarti woman. Kumputu painted the powerful story of her journey walking twelve hundred kilometers through the Western Desert near Kiwirrkurra, to Sturt Creek Station near Halls Creek, barefoot, with her sisters and her three mothers. Myarn now carries on her story through her painting, as well as some of her own dreaming about the galah and the cockatoo, two powerful spirits in conflict over the land. In her work, their struggle is represented through the channel of water that divides the land, symbolizing tension, change, and the ongoing question of rightful belonging. The land itself speaks in these moments, layered in memory, divided in experience, but always connected through culture.
