KONSTANTINA
Baraya Garrigarrang Ngura

The sea has many forms. Aboriginal story and song speaks to sea since time immemorial. The sea itself also tells us a story. It’s tide marks explain tidal changes, ice ages, big thaws and can help us to track back to a time that feels more like fantasy than reality. The sea hold innumerable secrets, its is argued by scientists that it was host to the very first life-creating organism long before man was even a twinkle in the night sky. And that too is linked, our birrung (stars) are our time keepers. Aboriginal people around the globe have stories about reading the stars for navigation, and to give some prediction to the seas movements via tides. To Baraya Garrigarrang Ngura, we are calling up all of the beautiful spirits, memories, history and magic that orientates our worlds. By singing up the Sea Country we acknowledge her long life, her many changes and her eternal movement within our own selves. This body of work is my homage to Garrigarrang Ngura; physical sea places themselves, and also to the times during the season cycles where incredible things happen to the sea and the beauty and character is unparalleled.  
This body of work is from the same series as Konstantina’s Nangamay Ngura that claimed the 2025 Callen Art Award. A series inspired by the songline connecting Gadigal Country to Kati Thanda (Lake Eyre) and the Garanga (Pelican) that journeys between them. ‘Nangamay means to fly like a bird or a spear through the sky
into dreaming,’ the artist notes, describing the work as ‘a meditation on water, spirit, and Country—seen from above, like a bird in flight, dreaming our vast, arid lands into being.’

View the full catalogue of works here.