Desmond Woodforde
Kinara Tjuta (many moons)

‘These castings are heavy, like the old metal, but they also carry something gentle — the trace of sand, wind, and time. They remind me of nights when people danced and sang ceremony under the stars, everyone happy and excited, and the sky full of stories.’ — Desmond Woodforde

Desmond Woodforde is a Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara artist developing bush-based sculpting techniques to tell Tjukurpa – his ancestral stories, knowledge and traditions. Artspace is proud to present Kinara Tjuta (many moons) in the Ideas Platform, Woodforde’s first solo exhibition in Sydney.

This installation constellates nine new sculptures to tell the creation of the cosmos. His sculptures, both ethereal and industrial, are created by hand drawing forms into red sand with an air compressor. They are then cast with repurposed aluminium, sourced from abandoned cars in the desert. Woodforde draws marks ‘like a story map — lines, circles, pathways’, referencing the movements of kinara (moon), kilipi (stars) and Tjakatu (the Milky Way) across the night sky. The resulting constellation, Kinara Tjuta, reflects the stories held in these movements, conveying an ideal of harmony in the light and dark of the stars. In the audio work, Sky People, 2025, Woodforde expands upon these stories, speaking between Pitjantjatjara and English to impart the creation story for all life on earth.

Woodforde also carries these stories as a form of truth telling and resistance. The red sand used in casting his sculptures holds layered material and symbolic meanings. The sand constitutes and represents Country, while also remaining entangled in the tragic legacy of British nuclear testing on APY Lands in the 1950s and 1960s. Subsequent investigations into the inadequate ‘cleanup’, including the 1985 Royal Commission into British Nuclear Tests in Australia, revealed ongoing contamination, as the remaining plutonium was ploughed back into the earth. Sculpting within this red sand, Woodforde incorporates these recent and lived histories into his custodianship, carrying a story of enduring resilience.

Free entry.