Kaye Brown lost a year's worth of artwork in a fire en route to exhibition, but the project wasn't in vain

abc.net.au - 03/05
Kaye Brown had completed one of the most ambitious bark painting projects to recently come from the Tiwi Islands, but after it was loaded on a truck to travel across the country, it never made it to the Art Gallery of South Australia.

In a basement room of the Museum of South Australia, catalogued on shelves more than 3,000 kilometres from their place of origin, is one of the largest collection of Tiwi artefacts on record.

The items were gathered from the islands in 1954 when ethnologist Charles Mountford led an expedition north at the direction of the Australian Geographic Society.

The 1954 "National Geographic" expedition to the Tiwi Islands lasted six months.(Supplied: State Library of South Australia)

The haul, enough to furnish over 120 metres of shelving at the museum, and viewable by appointment, includes the artwork of Kaye Brown's ancestors.

"I wanted to see the old paintings and all the carvings," said Brown, who recently visited the collection with her family.

A Tiwi group look at archived materials from the Mountford collection at the Museum of South Australia.(Supplied: Jilamara Arts)
Kaye Brown (middle) and her family viewed objects dating back to the 1920s.(Supplied: Jilamara Arts)

The family group hail from Paluwiyanga (Goose Creek) on Melville Island and paint at Jilamara Arts, an Abori...
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