The National Portrait Gallery is set to hold a virtual and accessible tour through a current exhibition of indigenous artworks from the Kimberley on Wednesday August 12 at 2pm.
The Gallery has partnered with Arts Access Australia for the virtual tour of the Ngalim-Ngalimbooroo Ngagenybe exhibition, who will provide audio description for people who are blind or have low vision and Auslan and closed captioning services for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Leisure Link’s Peter Greco caught up with Robert Bunzli and Marina Neilson from the National Portrait Gallery to discuss the Ngalim-Ngalimbooroo Ngagenybe exhibition, which is made up of works by Shirley Purdie.
“Shirley Purdie’s a Gidja artist, the Gidja peoples are from East Kimberley in Western Australia. She lives a very different life to me, an extraordinarily different life and she’s always lived on Gidja Country,” Marina said.
“The exhibition is non-representational, so it’s not about what she looks like, it’s about who she is, how she understands herself through connection to Country, to her people, her kin, to personal memories, her relationship to the land, her relationship to the Gidja dreaming,” she said.
Robert is excited to be back in the Gallery broadcasting exhibitions to people across Australia, and is looking forward to people getting in touch online and taking part in the virtual tour next week.
“This is the third of the trial tours we’ve been doing with Arts Access Australia and it will be promoted on Arts Access Australia’s Facebook page and on our website as well if people want a bit more information,” Robert said.
“We’ve been exploring these digital broadcasts, and for the first time we’re going to be doing a simultaneous Auslan interpretation as well as a brief audio description of the tour and the works as we go along,” he said.
For a full transcript of Peter's interview with Marina and Robert, please click here.
If you would like to take part in the audio described virtual tour on Wednesday 12 August at 2pm, you can register by visiting the National Portrait Gallery’s website, or send an expression of interest to [email protected] and the Gallery will send a Zoom invitation to click on shortly before the tour begins.
