Irene Kemp of the Dieri people of Innimanka, South Australia was born in Tibooburra in far west New South Wales and was raised and schooled in Silverton (near Broken Hill), approximately 360 kilometres south of Tibooburra.
Kemp completed a TAFE course in Aboriginal Arts and Crafts in Broken Hill and has earned a certificate for teaching Aboriginal Arts and Crafts. Before retiring Kemp was associated with the Thankakali Aboriginal Corporation Community Development Program in Broken Hill which is housed in a converted disused brewery building.
Kemp is a painter of acrylics on canvas and in the 1990s she began research into the South Australian Museum’s Toa collection. In her artist statement for Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery, Kemp says that the Toa’s are “symbolic representations of a country traditionally occupied and owned by the Diyari people (of South Australia) and that Toa’s were commonly used in traditional times as directional markers or sign posts. through their shape, colour, design or appendages Toas’s represent conspicuous topographic features which in turn are linked to the mythical wanderings of the Dreaming Muramura. They were indicators to guide others to where the people responsible for them had gone. They deserve public attention not only as objects of art but as objects of information.”
Kemp’s research into these objects led her to create a series of artistic representations of the old Toa’s she saw in the SAM and these were included in the exhibition, Messages From the Fringe in 2003 at the Walkabout Gallery in Leichhardt, NSW.
- Writers:
- Allas, Tess
- Date written:
- 2008
- Last updated:
- 2011
