Art-led learning and Sandra Saunders’ history paintings

Ngarrindjeri / Buandig artist Sandra Saunders is a long-standing intellectual and cultural warrior. In the 1990s, she was one of the leaders of the Kumarangk / Hindmarsh Island Bridge protests, standing alongside senior Ngarrindjeri women knowledge holders in opposition to the bridge’s construction on cultural grounds. The nearly decade-long struggle unfolded under intense media scrutiny and played out in a Royal Commission and subsequent court cases which amplified both the weight of opposition and the emotional toll on those involved. Out of this experience, Saunders created The Hindmarsh Island Collection (1996–2003) which featured in Dominic Guerrera’s essay “We Don’t Fabricate, We Weave: Kumarangk (Hindmarsh Island) and Ngarrindjeri women’s resistance” published in Artlink in 2021. Saunders’ first major (and ongoing) body of work, it is a project she describes as both cathartic and declarative: ‘a way to get rid of the pain’ and ‘a way to tell the story through my eyes’.