Birmuyingathi Maali Netta Loogatha, Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori, Warthadangathi Bijarrba Ethel Thomas, Thunduyingathi Bijarrb May Moodoonuthi, Kuruwarriyingathi Bijarrb Paula Paul, Wirrngajingathi Bijarrb Kurdalalngk Dawn Naranatjil, Rayarriwarrtharrbayingathi Mingungurra Amy Loogatha

Dulka Warngiid translates as ‘land of all’. Seven Kaiadilt women have collaborated to create a holistic vision of their tiny island home, the saltwater that surrounds it, the sun and the sky. Strong in cultural memory, consolidated in diaspora, the canvas works as a conceptual map of Bentinck Island that reveals seven artists’ detailed knowledge of special places. The colour sense and painterly flair of the work reflects the hand of seven intuitive painters who are communicating the way they see their Country and how they work with colour and brushstroke.

Jakayu Biljabu, Yikartu Bumba, May Chapman, Nyanjilpayi Nancy Chapman, Doreen Chapman, Linda James, Donna Loxton, Mulyatingki Marney, Reena Rogers, Beatrice Simpson, Ronelle Simpson, Muntararr Rosie Williams

Ngayartu Kujarra was painted using a mixture of rose, peach, pink, sage, white, blue and gold acrylic paints. Along the border of the canvas are twenty-nine vivid cobalt blue circles, each labelled with the name of a sacred waterhole in the East Pilbara region. The centre is rendered with an expansive wash of white paint, the artists’ unique way of depicting the central subject matter Ngayartu Kujarra – an immense salt lake known to many as Lake Dora. It is a vast, collaborative work made by twelve women across three generations from Martumili, in Western Australia.

The Island IV reimagines, magnifies and renders fantastical a previously little-known photographic reproduction of an etching by Wilhelm von Blandowski of a men’s ceremony of the Nyeri Nyeri people of the Murray-Darling region of southern New South Wales. Brook Andrew’s gigantic screenprint parodies Blandowski’s grotesque misunderstanding of the customary ritual of tooth evulsion as a lurid blue reflective myth-scape invaded by crudely drawn ‘savages’ – whom Blandowski described as ‘writhing and convulsing in the dust’.

Sandy Brumby paints his Country, Walyatjatjara, an important place associated with the Seven Sisters Dreaming, located north of Kalka in South Australia. The dominant shapes in the painting represent the mayi (bush food) found at this site. The small figure in the bottom-left corner represents the mischievous old man Nyiru, who chased the Seven Sisters right across the Western Desert and through the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. The Sisters constantly evaded his sexual advances and finally became part of the Pleiades, a star cluster of which seven are visible to the eye in the southern sky below the Belt of Orion.

The rhythmic black and white designs in Emily Kam Kngwarray’s work create an effortless dialogue with this work by Pitjantjatjara artist, the late Kunmanara (Wawiriya) Burton. Born in Pipalyatjara, west of Amata in northwest South Australia, Kunmanara Burton’s installation of works on paper tell a story associated with her father’s Country near Pipalyatjara, west of Amata in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. The works depict minyma mingkiri tjuta (small female desert mice). The mingkiri were pregnant and gave birth to many baby mice. They subsequently moved to the surrounding rock holes in search of food and water for their young.

A place to share represents a place of coming together. The work was inspired by First Nations women coming together to connect and create, often sitting in a circle to share culture and knowledge. The weaving was influenced by an overseas trip that the artist took to Bougainville, as part of the Women’s Wealth Project in 2018–19. For this project, Carmichael brought with her the traditional weaving fibre from Quandamooka Country, ungaire (swamp reed), which is woven throughout the work together with the contemporary materials of raffia, wool and yarn. She was gifted a 142 piece of noni (dyed pandanus) from Bougainville, the maroon material that forms the inner circle.

Gulayi – Quandamooka Women’s dillybag is a looped and knotted bag, inspired by a bag held in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. The label that accompanied the bag at the Pitt Rivers Museum stated that it had been collected ‘from the scene of a massacre’. Gulayi – Quandamooka Women’s dillybag is woven in the spirit of regenerating traditional Quandamooka weaving practices, many of which were dormant as a result of colonisation.

Juno – Reclaiming beautiful Juno was created in response to the labelling of woven objects in museums. When reviewing the collection at Pitt Rivers Musuem, Oxford, Carmichael found an old Pitt Rivers Museum label, which read; ‘Coiled basket in buttonhole stitch. Made by King Sambo’s Gin, Juno. She was so called because she was so very ugly. These are not their native names’. A traditional flat woven bag, Juno – Reclaiming beautiful Juno depicts the evolution of cultural practices that remain linked to ancestral forms. Carmichael has used ungaire, a reed that grows in shades of pink and green in rugged, swampy areas on Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island).

Timothy Cook represents designs associated with the kulama (coming of age) ceremony, which Tiwi perform in pakitiringa, the late wet season, when a ring appears around the moon. At kulama, which coincides with the harvest of the kulama yam, male and female Elders sing and dance for three days, welcoming boys into adulthood and giving them their adult names. The circular forms symbolise the moon, yam and ritual circles of the kulama; the cross reflects Cook’s Christian spirituality and multiple dots signify stars.

This painting by Yulyurlu Lorna Napurrurla Fencer, a well-respected artist who was born at Yumurrpa in the Northern Territory, represents an important Yam Dreaming site on Warlpiri Country, for yarla, also known as the large yam. The canvas has been configured with twisting coils and lines deriving from traditional body paint designs of women’s yawulyu ceremonies. To paint this story, Napurrurla would build up multiple lines of acrylic paint using yellows, purples, blues and reds, before overpainting the whole composition with vivid white.

‘These floating necklace forms work for me as life preservers, that is, operating perhaps as memory retainers for people on the edge. The wood and the pumice necklaces – Drift and Lifebearer seem very much to be about returning home (to Tasmania) sometime. I feel I can (in my mind’s eye) walk into Townsville beach with these wrapped around me and float into the sea and wash up back in north-east Tasmania. The coal necklace – Seam – is like the weighty lifeblood of ancestry – the coal black materiality of the earth that I haven’t answered or perhaps recognised.’
–Julie Gough, 2005

This painting contains seven stories. The first story is about medicine, while the second story tells of an army comprising five different clan groups. The third section shows the body decoration worn by the enemy, and the fourth section depicts the moon man as well as Alawa totems – mustard fish, butterfly, green bird, and white snake – the last of which is also depicted in the fifth section. The sixth story tells of the constant fight for survival, food, territory and women that took place in the early days of Gudabi life. The last section is about a special healing medicine, as well as songs shared by different clans.

‘Our film is called Kungka Kuṉpu, which means Strong Women. We want to show a strong, positive message about life in a remote Indigenous community – us young women here in Indulkana love to dance and have fun and make each other laugh. We’re proud to live on our land and hold onto our culture and our language. Us younger ones are from the generation that grew up with Coca Cola and TV as well as Tjukurpa (cultural stories) and bush tucker, so we like to have a bit of fun with combining those two different worlds.’
–Kaylene Whiskey, 2019

These humorous and brightly coloured textiles highlight ongoing issues related to identity, perception and the lack of collective knowledge of Indigenous culture and history in Australia. Using punch needling techniques, James embroiders souvenir tea towels that reference colonial settlement. Advance Australia not fair repurposes a vintage calendar tea towel from 1984 that depicts an Aboriginal man surrounded by outdated portrayals of Aboriginalia. These works challenge the concept of patriotism by subverting well-known symbols of national pride and juxtaposing familiar Indigenous imagery and references.

‘This work is a dedication to the Wurundjeri Ngurungaeta (leader) William Barak. Like all true leaders Barak possessed a myriad of qualities and rose to the challenge being many things to many people – a cultural ambassador and advocator, a devoted father and an insightful and gifted artist. The multiple elements of this installation reflect on the different aspects of Barak’s life, along with his community responsibilities and in turn the support he received, all of which are brought together by the use of light … Barak created a new space to live within; a space and an example which we continue to aspire to for future generations.’
–Jonathan Jones, 2010

Queenie McKenzie’s stirring personal story unfolded near her conception site, an Echidna Dreaming place on Old Texas Downs station, Western Australia. Her mother was a Malngin/Gurindji woman and her father a White man, who wanted to take her away in infancy, but her mother resisted this and a subsequent attempt by the authorities to remove her. Consequently, Mckenzie grew up among Gija people, learning Ngarrangkarni (Dreaming) stories. McKenzie used ochres of her Country, which she mined herself and mixed in subtle combinations, to distil and reveal its beauty and timbre. The organic life of the paint layer and its richly differentiated ochre sections form a tactile metaphor of the land itself.

‘I am the target I wear it on my face. My heart is here, inside my chest. My skin is the Mission Brown colour. Fences surround me and I have to wear this dress.’
–Clinton Naina, 2005

Clinton Naina uses his work to explore the consequences of European colonisation on Indigenous people throughout Australia. The title of the triptych references heritage colours derived from the muted tones of a Federation paint box. This work addresses an insistent theme of the artist’s practice: the impact of colonialism on Torres Strait Islander culture, language and customary ritual practices. Naina represents figures in mission dresses, fenced in by structures and systems imposed by the dominant culture.

Working with an austere monochrome palette, matt texture and the repetition of simple designs over large surfaces, Lena Nyadbi has formulated an austere visual language that conceptualises her innermost feeling for Country. The graphic vertical signs represent jimbirla (spearheads) made from the razor-sharp stones that abound in Nyadbi’s father’s Jimbirla Country, north of Warmun. Jimbirla were often produced for ritual exchange and hunting and were also used to make cicatrices on initiates’ bodies in ceremony. As a dramatic counterpoint to this formal composition, stars float and shimmer elusively in the smoky grey night sky, an allusion to the infinite beyond.

Tiger Palpatja’s paintings narrate his Tjukurpa, the creation story of Piltati. Embedded in the land is a story of an escalating conflict between wati kutjara (two brothers) and their wives, minyma kutjara (two sisters). Every day the women would go hunting while their husbands performed inma (ceremonies). One day the wives decided to eat all the food they had gathered rather than share it and in a fit of rage, their husbands transformed themselves into wanampi (giant water serpents) and travelled beneath the ground. In search of the wnaampi, the wives dug furiously into the ground, creating the rocky gorge at Piltati.

Bidi Karta Werda (Path across) includes irregular sections of Balga resin, symbolic of the artist’s Nyoongar identity. The largescale painting is a reinterpretation of a nineteenth-century panorama on paper made by European explorer Robert Dale in 1834. Christopher Pease’s work is painted in a figurative style, which is modelled on early colonial engravings. His painted ‘colonial’ views of the Swan River area reference the work made by settler artists encountering unfamiliar lands. Pease, however, has overlaid his landscape with symbols associated with European science and colonial expansion, as well as references to ancestral beings and Indigenous spiritual frameworks that are embodied in traditional custodianship of Country.

For Tiwi people, the story of Purrukuparli and his wife Wai-ai (or Bima) is profoundly important. One day, while gathering food, Bima was enticed to make love with Taparra, her brother-in-law, leaving their son Jinani alone for so long that he perished from heat stroke. Purrukuparli picked up the body of his dead son, walked out into the sea and announced that death had come to the Tiwi, leaving his wife in the bush. Since then, whenever someone dies, Tiwi people make tutini (poles) and pamijini (arm bands), paint their bodies and perform mourning songs and dances to say goodbye to the deceased.

Reko Rennie is a Melbourne-based, interdisciplinary artist who explores personal and political narratives through the lens of his Kamilaroi heritage, and broader cultural themes around power, identity, memory and history. Reko’s neon OA WARRIOR I (blue) and (pink) each feature the ghosted outline of a warrior figure, asserting the need to challenge colonial histories, and pay respect to Aboriginal heroes. They emphasise the importance of recent revolutions that have seen statues of colonisers pulled down, and recognition of Indigenous sovereignty declared around the globe.

Through a dense field of white dots, set against a black background, Dorothy Napangardi has created a kaleidoscopic sea that both gathers and dissolves across the canvas. The subject matter, Karntakurlangu, is one of the most extensive and significant women’s Dreamings belonging to Warlpiri people. Napangardi’s work shows the ceremonial site of origin for Minamina, the artist’s custodial Country that is located in the Tanami Desert, north of Yuendumu in the Northern Territory.

Maureen Thompson’s highly figurative gouche paintings illustrate the artist’s conception of Country and her interest in cool colours. After moving back to Ngukurr in the late 1980s, Thompson began painting by watching Senior Ngukurr artist Willie Gudabi and his wife Moima Willie paint. These works by Thompson showcase the plants and wildlife from Alawa Country and Mara Country, where her mother and father come from respectively. These are important early works from the beginning of the Thompson’s career, which capture the extraordinary vibrancy in her work and her singular way of painting.

When first made, this cartographic work, that is at once a cultural self-portrait and history painting, was visionary in its dimensions. Its monumental size physically draws us into a complex and layered composition. Tim Leura incorporated miniature iterations of three of his early paintings in this composition, connecting this major work within the early history of the Papunya Tula movement. The meaning of the skeleton character has been speculated on for years and is thought, perhaps, to represent Tim Leura’s father in transition from the physical world into the Dreaming, invoking Anmatyerr beliefs that time is both circular and indivisible.

Roy Wiggan is a Bardi man who was born on Sunday Island in 1930. Bardi people’s Country is situated north of Broome on the Dampier Peninsula. Wiggan is known artistically for creating totems that are used by Bardi people to perform ilma (open ceremonies using objects). In the 1990s, Wiggan made a number of ilma, including these five. The ilma on the left, Sunrise with clouds tells the story of dawn along the Dampier Peninsula. The cool blue and green tones of the shaded earth and yellow highlights of the sun, complete with clouds formed with cotton and wool, capture a magical time of the morning.

Jason Wing’s work explores issues of bicultural and Indigenous political identity. The bullet hole is a reference to the infamous Gweagal shield held in the British Museum, which was shot during the first encounter of Captain Cook at Botany Bay in 1770. Wing draws attention to the unequal power dynamics between Aboriginal people and early European settlers, by connecting the imagery of the Gweagal shield to slogans synonymous with the current Black Lives Matter and Aboriginal Deaths in Custody movements.