Kieren Karritpul – Turtles and Fire 2026

• Size: 40.5 x 51 cm
• Medium: Acrylic on pre-stretched canvas

Long-neck turtle

Early in the dry season the Long-necked turtles dig themselves into the mud to hibernate. This is the season when we go hunting for them. We burn the flood plains so we can clear the land to see the surface, then we go hunting. Traditionally we use a digging stick but today we usually use a crowbar. Sometimes we see mud marks in the shape of a soft serve ice cream with a small peak, that shows us where there is a breathing hole for a turtle. We hit the ground with the crowbar to see if there is something underneath. There is a sound/feel when the end of the bar hits the shell of a sleeping turtle. Then we dig. We love eating turtle – white meat, yellow fat, delicious!

Artist Bio – Kieren Karritpul

Kieren Karritpul is an outstanding and award winning artist who has work has been featured in solo exhibitions with Nomad (Darwin) and Tolarno Galleries (Melbourne) and group exhibitions around the world. His most recent solo exhibition was YERR WURRKEME MARRGU in May 2025 at Tolarno. See the exhibition here.

• Born 1994, lives and works in Nauiyu, Daly River, Northern Territory, Australia
• Traditional Country: Malfiyin
• Language: Ngen’gi wumirri

In Daly River artist Kieren Karritpul’s art there is no escaping the woven lines of inspiration. The woven form is both subject and metaphor in his work, and also to some extent part of their process. In his first solo exhibition, Karritypul, the titles of his paintings, prints and textile-based work all indicated a particular woven form including the yerggi which is actually a pre-woven form, yerrgi being the Daly River word (Ngan’gikurrungurr language) for the ubiquitous pandanus plant, the Screw Palm, Pandanus spiralis which together with the Sand Palm (merrepen, Livistona humilis) are the main sources of fibre for Top End weavers….

In these abstracted views, the woven form almost becomes mandala-like with the imagery built up from radiating bands of short parallel lines. In this sense the line can be seen as a faithful transposition of the coil weave technique rather than the traditionally longer, looser stitches though it is in effect more about Kieren’s visual-poetic licence in the process of translating one form into another to become something much more than what it represents; to transcend.

– Maurice O’Riordan, Director, Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, 2015 (Woven Lines catalogue essay excerpts)