Benita Multa

Benita has lived within Ikuntji Community, Haasts Bluff, and Brown’s Bore Outstation all her life, beginning her journey with painting in 1999. She paints the country around Haasts Bluff, Brown’s Bore and Muruntji. A community of around 170 people, Ikuntji Community’s distance from townships has allowed the local people to maintain many traditional practices, such as hunting and gathering bush tucker. The ancient mountain range encircling the community is beautifully reduced to its extraordinary form in Benita’s works. Focusing on the relationship between land and sky, her works define the parameters of life within this, her birth country. Informed by earlier Ikuntji Art Centre artists, such as Long Tom Tjapanangka with his bold representations of his lands, and the softer works of women such as Eunice Napanangka and Narputta Nangala, Benita proves herself to be at the forefront of the Ikuntji Languru, Ikuntji’s emerging artists. Educated at the community’s school in Haasts Bluff, Benita continued her education at Yirrara College in Alice Springs, a six-hour round-trip from home. She has two brothers and four sisters. She is married to Trevor and they have a young daughter named Claudia.