Best Sellers and Memorable Works 2025
This has been an exciting year for us.
We'd like to take a moment to share some of our highlights from 2025.
There is a particular thrill when we encounter new artists who bring a fresh vision to their work, and it is equally wonderful to see established artists experimenting with new ideas. There were many such moments in our exhibitions throughout the year.
Then there are the works by legends of the contemporary art movement. Now and then, one of their paintings returns to us from a collector for resale. It's hard to describe the powerful presence these works hold as they hang on our gallery walls. They command attention and reverence in equal measure.
These are moments of deep significance for our team. We've chosen the works in this collection to honour both the legacy of those who have left us and celebrate the vibrancy and relevance of artists painting today.
For over thirty years, we've had the privilege of watching this extraordinary art movement continually evolve and move through the generations. To this day, it remains profoundly connected to Country, sacred stories and ancestral traditions.
We hope you enjoy these highlights from our 2025.
Janice Stanley
One of the highlights of the year was certainly the exhibition called Salt Lake Country, which featured works by two artists, Janice Stanley and Jackie Wirramanda.
Janice's paintings were a standout for us. They're beautiful, flowing expressions of colour, the way salt lakes absorb the chemistry of the earth up into the salty brine. In a year in which Central Australia and Lake Eyre have had huge water intakes, there's been a lot of activity out in that Salt Lake country.
Janice's paintings are wonderful, evocative, colourful, and they capture a particular Salt Lake group near Mount Connor in the Northern Territory near her homelands. Janice's exhibition paintings all sold out. So that was a wonderful thing for the artist.
And alongside Janice, Jackie Wirramanda's paintings were extraordinary as well; they are intricate and multi-layered and express something of the women's activities around Salt Lake Country, where food gathering and hunting took place. Two wonderful artists contributed to that exhibition.
Rohin Kickett
Rohin Kickett had his second solo exhibition at Japingka Gallery during the year. The great thing about Rohin is that he explores parts of regional Western Australia that we don't see other artworks coming from.
Following his previous exhibition, which also explored Salt Lakes and the wheat belt, where salt had infiltrated farming country, this exhibition focused on a region around Mount Magnet.
The title "Charlie's Footsteps" was Rohin's homage to his ancestor who lived in that country. Charlie Sandstone was taken away from his home country and spent part of his life in that desert region. So Rohin is revisiting all that land and finding aspects of the landscape, which puts him in connection with his great-grandfather. He also connects us with an extraordinary family story and a very isolated area of the Western Australian landscape.
Munu Kulyuru
The Seven Sisters stories are great songlines, great women's stories, and creation stories of the country, as well as the retelling of a story about the constellation of the Pleiades. The exhibition, titled Star Journey, showcased works by many renowned Aboriginal artists. The one we are highlighting here is by Munu Kulyuru.
Her story is a woman's creation story. Many of the great stories of the Seven Sisters come from the Pitjantjatjara lands, but the story itself crosses over many boundaries and many language groups in Australia. It is, to some degree, a shared story, but it is also differently expressed in different parts of the country.
Munu has painted these quite abstracted versions, much more reflective of a creation story happening on the ground rather than happening in the sky. Her work was one of many fabulous pieces in the show, focusing on how the Seven Sisters stories are told throughout Australia.
View: Star Journey Exhibition
Alison Munti Riley & Amelia Riley
Bush Garden was based around the theme of Aboriginal artists investigating aspects of plants and foods sourced and harvested from the land. Naturally, this includes native plants, berries, seeds, and fruits, among other things.
The painting that we have is by Alison Munti Riley and her granddaughter Amelia Riley. It's great to reflect on the skills and techniques that have been passed down across generations.
Amelia has followed in her grandmother's footsteps and painted some gorgeous little works, all of which have sold. Alison collaborates with her granddaughter and paints very earthy images of bush foods, such as bush tomato and damper seed, and also references the Seven Sisters Dreaming. There is, therefore, a connection between women's traditional roles and the ceremonial roles that link them to the story of the Seven Sisters.
View: Bush Garden Exhibition
Troy Drill
Three Wise Men was an exhibition of three 40-year-old male artists from Warmun community. The artists felt that this was an opportunity for three emerging, yet very skilled, artists to create their own look and innovate around the styles that come from Warmun. Their area is famous for ochre painting, and it's famous for the flattened surfaces of landscape that we typically find in Warmun ochre paintings.
Troy contributed some paintings around the story of Kangaroo Fat, which was a specific place amongst the hills, referring to Purnululu, also known Bungle Bungles, where Troy received custodianship or stewardship from the senior people of that country.
He has included a degree of fine line work, which we've never seen before in ochre paintings from Warmun. This made his work really stand out for us. It's very distinctive, still using blocks of ochre colour, which is more typical, but broken up by this very fine line work. He has developed a technique for creating a fine line, possibly using grass stalks or plant material to achieve that level of fineness.
There were three artists in that exhibition, including Troy's colleagues, Jonathon Malgil and Dwayne Jessell. It was a really interesting show. Something quite different from the Warmun art community.
Dorothy Napangardi
Dorothy Napangardi is a legend in Central Desert art. She paints Mina Mina women's ceremonial grounds in central Australia beyond the Tanami Desert.
We currently have a large work titled Sandhills, which was acquired from a private collection. It is a resale, and the painting has that sense of movement and cohesion that Dorothy achieves with fine work.
It's a wonderful painting to have hanging in the gallery, and we're very pleased to have that up on the walls right now.
Tommy Watson
Tommy passed away in 2017, and he was a legendary Western Desert painter. His work is most recognisable for his intense use of colour and very dense dotting. The paint is totally immersive. It's deep and rich, with a thick coating on the canvas.
Tommy has called this painting Pikarli, which is part of his name. It is his birthplace in the desert. Again, this is a resale. This piece comes from a private collection and is currently on display in the gallery.
View: Tommy Watson Artist Page
Yukultji Napangati
Yukultji is part of a very famous Pintupi group of people who came out of the desert in 1984. They had no prior contact with any aspect of Western civilisation up until that time.
Yukultji's group were named the Pintupi Nine. Yukultji's paintings convey the mesmerising qualities of the desert, showcasing its immensity and continuous flow.
She captures the rhythm of those sandhills in a style uniquely her own. Currently, we have two of her paintings in the gallery. This painting, 120cm x 91cm, is a beautiful little example of work by this wonderful painter.
View: From The Desert Exhibition
Rover Thomas
Rover Thomas is one of the legends of Kimberley Warmun painting. This is a private collection work, Bedford Station, that is being sold. It has Rover's fresh use of ochre painting. This painting is actually on hardboard.
You can see the brushstrokes and the working of the ochre as he lays down the paint. He is one of the really great names in the Aboriginal art tradition from the East Kimberley. This is a wonderful work to take in and absorb.
People seem to be able to look at his composition and the rhythm of his paintings and be transfixed by that. There's just something very special about the way he represents that country in a classical topographical style.
It's looking down on the country, so you can see where the hills are and the rocks and where the soil types change as you move through the country. This is a beautiful work by Rover Thomas.
View: Rover Thomas Artist Page
Kudditji Kngwarreye
Kudditji Kngwarreye, is an Anmatyerre artist who passed away in 2017. He was a senior custodian for Emu Dreaming on his country in central Australia, northeast of Alice Springs.
He painted a number of these works, which are entirely abstract. They're broken up blocks of colour flowing into each other. Often the colour represents the feeling of the land or the season that's taking place. We can feel the heat and fire of summer or the cool season, the cloudiness, and the filling of the waterholes.
This particular painting, which is large, nearly three metres across, is plainly from the high season of the heat in the middle of summer. It is a classic Kudditji work, and it captures something special about his country, which we can instantly recognise as the style of this great artist.