Aboriginal art exhibitions are on display at Japingka Aboriginal Art Gallery, 47 High Street, Fremantle - Mon-Fri 10am-5.00pm and Sat & Sun 12-5pm. There is no entrance fee to view the exhibitions.
Online art exhibition links are accessible below for those not able to attend the gallery. Advance viewing and purchasing of exhibition works is available to subscribers of the Japingka Newsletter.
From the Desert
20 February – 8 April 2026
From the Desert presents artworks by leading senior painters of the Western and Central Desert art movement. The artists are from many language groups including Pintupi, Warlpiri, Pitjantjatjara, Anmatyerre and Alyawarre. Amongst the many major artists contributing to this exhibition are Ronnie Tjampitjinpa, George Hairbrush Tjungurrayi, Yukulti Napangati, Tommy Watson and Walangkura Napanangka.
Bush Garden
Aboriginal people have long been nurturers and observers of the natural cycle of life in the bush. Knowledge of flowering plants provides inside information on food resources and bush medicines as well as the location of surface water. The entire flow of life in the bush gravitates around an understanding of the plants that sustain life.
Star Journey
The Seven Sisters Tjukurpa, the Dreaming creation law, is important to Australian Aboriginal people across the country. It is an epic story told in many different languages as it crosses Australia. The songline follows the passage of seven sisters as they evade a lustful magical man. As their adventure unfolds, so does the world come into being with its landforms and sky.
At the Gallery
19 Sept - 21 Oct 2025
Japingka presents an exhibition of recent works to display the diversity, quality and consistency of selected artworks from many different regions of Australia. Amongst the 25 artists whose paintings we have chosen, some are long-time exhibitors at Japingka and some a relatively new to our gallery.
Kirriwirri – Nada Rawlins
19 Sept - 31 Oct 2025
Nada Rawlins (c1936- 2019) painted her country around Kirriwirri in the Great Sandy Desert and the Percival Lakes area. Nada’s painting style uses saturated colour to represent ancestral country, the dominating salt lakes and waterholes that were critical to survival.
Lorna Napurrula Fencer – Yurmurrpa
Lorna Napurrula Fencer (c1924 – 2006) created some of the great paintings of the Yarla or bush yam creation stories from Yurmurrpa on Warlpiri country in the Tanami Desert. Lorna Napurrula painted the various stories connected to Yurmurrpa using a free flowing and colour-laden painting style.
Small Bites
Small Bites is a little appetiser of small sized artworks selected by the team at Japingka Gallery. Although many of the works come from desert regions with big horizons their scale works well to capture the essence of Indigenous stories from these regions. Twenty eight artists have contributed to the exhibition.
Salt Lake Country
1 August – 4 September 2025
Salt Lakes are major landmarks of inland Australia, many are millions of years old, the remnants of ancient dried river plains. The vibrant colours from mineral deposits are seen in Janice Stanley’s artworks of Pantu salt lakes in South Australia, part of a larger Dreaming story of the Seven Sisters constellation. Jackie Wirramanda paints images of Lake Tyrell in north-western Victoria with aspects of her ancestral country where people gathered around the shallow water pools.
Three Wise Men
23 May– 18 July 2025
Warmun art centre in the East Kimberley nurtures Gija culture, story-telling and oral history. Within these strong traditions younger members of the community are finding their own way into cultural representation, expressing themselves in new and distinctive ways. Three of the younger generation of men are artists Troy Drill, Dwayne Jessell and Jonathon Malgil.
Two Sisters – Art from Davenport Ranges
1 August - 4 September 2025
Japingka Gallery is pleased to present this two-artist show by sisters Jessie Kemarr Beasley and Jessie Kemarr Peterson from Epenarra community in Central Australia. As senior artists in their community the work reflects their long history and knowledge of the land, ceremonial practices and the everyday activities of family members.
Biddee Baadjo – Piyurr
21 February - 25 March 2025
Paintings of Great Sandy Desert homelands painted by Biddee Baadjo at her Kimberley community at Wangkatjungka between 2002 and 2010. Biddee Baadjo was born around 1938 near Purrpurn, in the Great Sandy Desert near Purntujarpa or Jupiter Well. Baadjo r…
Rohin Kickett – Charlie’s Footsteps
21 February – 25 March 2025
Ballardong Noongar artista Rohin Kickett, traces his great grandfather’s journey from where he was taken from Country at Sandstone and moved to various care stations in Western Australia. Here Rohin concentrates on locations around Mt Magnet which was one stage where Charlie Sandstone was located on his journey away from his family.
Ninuku Artists
4 April - 14 May 2025
Ninuku Arts is located on the APY Lands of South Australia, near the borders with Western Australia and Northern Territory. It sits among the Tomkinson Ranges, where it services Kalka and Pipalyatjara communities. Here ten artists have contributed artworks to this exhibition.
In Black and White
18 October – 20 December 2024
Aboriginal artists working in black and white media create works that can be delicate and finely worked or bold and expressive. In this selection of artworks we see the graphic use of black and white to express the stories and designs related to body painting and to food resources. The artists exhibiting include Ronnie Tjampijinpa, Dulcie Long Pwerle and Jorna Newberry.
More Little Gems
20 November 2024 - 20 January 2025
Smaller works by fifteen Aboriginal artists whose works are displayed at Japingka Gallery. The paintings are selected by our art team to reflect the quality of small scale paintings that are available in the price range $300 to $700. The exhibition is an evolving online gallery display and artworks are available for immediate shipment from Japingka Gallery.
Madeline Purdie: Ngarrangkarni – Dreamtime Stories
18 October - 12 November 2024
Warmun artist Madeline Purdie presents ochre paintings of the Ngarrankarni Dreamtime stories of her Gija ancestors of the East Kimberley. Madeline takes her traditional country as the subject of her paintings including her mother’s country. Knowledge pertaining to these subjects has been passed down over time, along with a distinct visual language, and a mastery of natural earth pigment.
Sonya Edney – Burringurrah Dreaming
30 August – 30 September 2024
Sonya Edney relates the Creation story of her country at Burringurrah or Mt Augustus, in inland central Western Australia. The ancestral figure Burringurrah created the rivers and creeks of the Gascoyne with his fighting stick. Sonya says ‘as we were growing up in the bush we were told the story of the sacred mountain and the Burringurrah story. All my paintings come from that Burringurrah country – that’s where I’m from.’
Epenarra Artists- Pammy & Magdalene Foster
19 July – 20 August 2024
Japingka Gallery is pleased to present the first two-artist show by young rising stars of the Epenarra community, sisters Magdalene Kemarr Foster and Pammy Kemarr Foster. Their paintings of the beautiful country of the Davenport Ranges show the land rich with resources of bush medicine and bush tucker plants.
Fire and Water
19 July – 20 August 2024
Managing fire and water are central tenets for Indigenous knowledge in Australia. Yondee Shane Hansen says “It’s about the rain, the water and then, after that, fire that burns off the land so it can re-grow. They are the two elements. They cleanse the land and they heal it. They are the great forces and energies.”
Jimmy Pike – Art of the Great Sandy Desert
7 June – 15 July 2024
Walmajarri artist Jimmy Pike (1940-2002) created dramatic images of his homelands in the Great Sandy Desert that drew on lived history, mythic and Dreamtime stories and reactions to the contemporary world. These stories were told in a series of 87 graphic artworks, mostly comprising screenprints with several etchings and lithographs.