Sarrita King | 'Earth Elements, 2026' | 40x60cm

Code: DSK26065

Artist: Sarrita King

Title: Earth Elements

Area: Darwin, NT

Community: Gurindji / Waanyi

Medium: Acrylic On Canvas

Size: 40x60cm

Year: 2026

Sarrita King paints the land as if hovering above it. Earth Elements looks down on a stretch of Country where water cuts through darker ground. A pale river runs diagonally across the canvas. It glows soft blue against the deep, dotted earth around it.

Two waterholes sit in the lower half. They appear as concentric rings, the way natural waterholes register on the landscape when seen from the sky. A third, smaller one drifts in the upper left corner. These are the gathering places King remembers from travels around Katherine and Alice Springs. Meeting points. Places that hold life.

The dotting here is fine and patient. Layer upon layer builds the texture of soil, sand and stone. Horizontal currents move through the work like wind across dunes or water through a channel. King learned this layered approach from her father, the late William King Jungala, and developed it into her own visual shorthand for the textures of the tropical north.

She calls her wider practice the language of the earth. Every ripple and crack is the land speaking. In this work the speech is quiet. The river and the waterholes carry the story. The surrounding country listens.

King is a Gurindji Waanyi woman who grew up in Darwin, immersed in the weather and landforms of the Top End. Her Gurindji ancestors led the Wave Hill Walk-Off, the first successful land rights claim in Australia. That inheritance sits behind her aerial views of Country. She paints the land her family has always known, translated for a contemporary eye.