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.
All are welcome to join us for the free opening Friday night event at 6.30pm. There is a short talk about the exhibition and the artists may be present.
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.
Amanda Westley – Colours of Ngarrindjeri Country
19 August – 30 September 2022
Colours of Ngarrindjeri Country is Amanda Westley’s third solo exhibition at Japingka Gallery. Amanda distils the mood of landscapes around the Coorong, Fleurieu Peninsula and Victor Harbor regions of South Australia. Her paintings read as intense landscapes that hold the rhythms and moods of these coastal places. Amanda suggests the forces of nature that are shaping the landscape and our wider environment.
Sandhill Country – Paintings of Inland Australia
3 June - 20 July 2022
The defining features of Australias expansive deserts are the sandhills that give structure to the landscape and often create micro zones within the vast openness of the desert. Structures of the landscape also inform the cultural markings and patterns that appear in Tingari and other sacred markings that link people, landscape and creation myths. Nineteen artists have contributed to this exhibition.
Arlpwe Artists: Off the Beaten Track
8 April - 24 May 2022
Arlpwe Art & Culture Centre is located on Kaytetye Country in the community of Ali Curung, 380 km north of Alice Springs and 30kms east of the Stuart Highway. The art centre represents artists from four main langauge groups – Kaytetye, Warlpiri, Alyawarr and Warumungu. ‘I think there’s a bit of an Ali Curung renaissance taking place’ says Arts Manager Levi McLean. ‘The work is beautiful, fresh, and profound.’
Stumpy Brown – Ngupawarlu My Country
8 April - 24 May 2022
Nyuju Stumpy Brown (1924- 2011) – her boldly coloured renditions of her ceremonial country of Ngupawarlu sing out with an intensity that highlights the spiritual significance of this country to her identity as a painter and as a cultural lawwoman. Stumpy has always been an important woman in the community for law and culture. She carries the Women’s Law from Wangkatjungka side right through to desert side at Balgo. She is a senior law woman and traditional owner and custodian of Ngupawarlu.
Sonya Edney – Recent Paintings
25 February - 29 March 2022
Sonya Edney returns with her third solo exhibition at Japingka Gallery, showing Recent Paintings of the Gascoyne region. The artist’s work shows the open spinifex country of the upper Gascoyne area and the effects of the seasons at play on the landscape. Her work displays wildflowers coming into bloom after rains, the flood plains of the Gascoyne River and the secluded waterholes protected by trees and shrubs. The Aboriginal stories and paintings of the Night Skies are dramatic in scope and intensity.
Barkly Artists
25 February - 29 March 2022
Barkly Artists represent painters from four communities- Canteen Creek, Epenarra Artists at Wutunugurra, Tartukula Artists at Tennant Creek and Kulumindini Arts at Elliott. Barkly Regional Arts services upto 20% of the total area of the Northern Territ…
Sounds of Summer 2
26 November 2021 - 28 January 2022
Sounds of Summer 2 displays artworks filled with light and warmth from Indigenous artists. These are some of our favourite artists selected by the team at Japingka Gallery. Artists include Bernadine Johnson, Naomi Price Pwerle, Gracie Morton Pwerle and Jeannie Petyarre from the Utopia Homelands. Jorna Newberry, Nellie Marks Nakamarra and Winnie Reid Nakamarra from Western Desert communities. Note: paintings are unstretched.
Julie Nangala Robinson – Pirlinyanu
15 October - 18 November 2021
Julie Nangala Robinson is the elder daughter of famed artist Dorothy Napangardi. She has been an artist since the late 1990s and follows in the style of her mother Dorothy, to the extent that she uses minimal and contemporary designs in constructing her artworks. Many of her paintings are based on the Water Dreaming site at Pirlinyanu, which is her traditional country.
Yondee Shane Hansen – Derbarl Yerrigan
15 October 2021 - 28 January 2022
Recent paintings by Noongar artist Yondee Shane Hansen focus on traditional songlines and walking paths along the waterways associated with Derbarl Yerrigan, the Swan River on the coastal plains around Perth. His paintings show the interconnected places of the Swan River and the large coastal lakes at Joondalup and urban Perth.
Anangu Women Artists – Strength in Beauty
30 July - 26 September 2021
Anangu Women Artists of the APY Lands are recognised for their boldly coloured paintings telling the Tjukurrpa creation stories of their homelands. The narratives in the exhibition ‘Strength in Beauty’ centre on Women Creation Ancestors who travelled the country, laying down important ceremonial sites and customary law.
Rosella Namok Recent Paintings
30 July - 26 September 2021
Rosella Namok brings the tropical heat and the coastal colours of Far North Queensland to her latest exhibition at Japingka Gallery. Rosella uses fluid paint surfaces that she works into, scraping back linear designs into the underlayers of solid colour. This exhibition has a lighter feel with the artist using pinks and gold colours and some pastel tones added to her palette.
Kurun Warun Paintings 2021
14 May - 30 June 2021
Kurun Warun creates artworks that are expansive and capture the rhythms of the land and waterways where indigenous people have lived and cultivated and hunted for thousands of years. The structures in his paintings refer to bodypainting and hunting. They also reflect the managed environment of Aboriginal lands in the Western District of Victoria where his family come from.
Rover Thomas & Kimberley Ochre Painters
14 May - 30 June 2021
Rover Thomas and Kimberley Ochre Painters, presenting artworks by major Kimberley artists using ochre pigments. Many of these artists helped set benchmarks for a new generation of painters to understand and aspire to. Artists include Rover Thomas, Jack Britten, Queenie McKenzie, Henry Wambini, Beerbee Mungnari and Freddie Timms.
Sonya Edney – Gascoyne Night Skies
12 March - 27 April 2021
Sonya Edney has revisited many of the sites from her childhood growing up in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia. One of the strongest memories is of the stories of the Milky Way and Seven Sisters told as they gazed at the luminous night skies over the spinifex plains country near Mt Augustus.
Jilamara Arts
12 March - 27 April 2021
Jilamara Arts & Crafts is based at Milikapiti on Melville Island, part of the Tiwi Islands. The artistic output of Jilamara art centre is strongly influenced by traditional cultural practices and ceremonies. The patterns remain the collective cultural inheritance for all Tiwi artists, who continue to celebrate the traditions through their own unique impressions of culture.
Sounds of Summer
15 December 2020 - 12 February 2021
We have brought together recent paintings that fill us with the thoughts of summer, the rhythms and sounds of the heat and light of summer in the southern hemisphere. We felt that this was a positive resolve after the most unusual year of 2020. These paintings testify to the resilient culture of the artists and their persistent inclination to express their heritage.
Mowanjum Artists 2020
6 November – 21 December 2020
Mowanjum artists represent the cultures of Worrorra, Wunumbul and Ngarinyin language groups of the west Kimberley. Their stories are written on the caves and rock ledges across their Country. Artists from the Mowanjum community near Derby continue the tradition. Their paintings in ochre and limited edition prints tell the family stories of the Wandjina tradition and other cultural aspects of life in the region.
Spinifex Artists – On Our Country
6 November – 21 December 2020
The Spinifex People survived in an arid but beautiful environment. The landscape holds the culture of the Spinifex People and their daily interactions are governed by the moral compass of the first beings who created the physical realm. With story interwoven in song and dance, the country maps a tangible way forward for the people to reflect and learn upon.
The Art and Life of Dorothy Napangardi – 2020 Retrospective Collection
18 September - 27 October 2020
This 2020 retrospective exhibition for Dorothy Napangardi (1952- 2013) shows the artist’s journey towards the refined style of the later Mina Mina paintings that established her career as an outstanding artist. All artworks from the exhibition are avai…
60 by 60 – Small Paintings
18 September – 27 October 2020
These paintings are selected from the gallery collection of artworks sized 60×60 cm. The works are largely affordable art with a few truly collectable artists added to the mix. We see the variation of styles, from the finest dot work by Utopia artists Genevieve Loy and Gracie Morton, to the bold Western Desert styles of Tjawina Porter and Debra Young Nakamarra.