Elintja (galah)

Hayley Coulthard is on the board of Desart and the Hermannsburg Potters Aboriginal Corporation. She is the daughter of senior practitioner Anita Ratara and over the last ten years of her practice has established herself as a community leader and an outstanding potter. Hayley’s work is identifiable by its incorporation of ceramic relief methods, and her depictions of her mother’s Country at Palm Valley where the Wily Wagtail is of cultural significance.

Here, Hayley draws attention to the Elintja (galah) that her and her family watch as they walk around Country sourcing bush raisins and sometimes bush tobacco. The locations depicted are of Mount Sonder and the MacDonnell Rangers around Ntaria, where she and her family sit in the shade and watch the mountains as they have done since she was a child.

Hayley’s works are held in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery of Australia. In 2019 her works were featured in the following exhibitions: ‘Clay Stories’, Araluen Art Centre (touring); TARNANTHI 2019, Art Gallery of South Australia; ‘Pmara nurnaka. Urrknga nurnaka. Nurna lhama pmara marra inthurra nurnakanha artitjika: Our country. Our clay. We go out on our beautiful country’, Bett gallery, Tasmania; ‘Berder. Gaba. Urrknga. Wantja’, Nishi Gallery; and ‘The Hermannsburg Potters’, Alcaston Gallery.