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.
Kimberley Artists
November 25, 2011 - December 22, 2011
This exhibition features works by four Kimberley elders – Rosie Uhl, Nada May, Rita Thomas and Elsie Thomas. The artists’ ages range from their fifties to their seventies, but the journey they make into the world of painting brings a vigour and freshness to these images of Country.
Spinifex Artists Exhibition 2011
October 23, 2011 - November 16, 2011
Spinifex Artists present their most recent paintings, in a process that continues the journey of countrymen revisiting and reconnecting with traditional Pitjantjatjara lands. The paintings detail the pathways and the actions of Ancestors who created, travelled across and are contained within Spinifex lands. By documenting these sites, the relationships and stories provide the artists with a method of recording and passing on elements of culture that are crucial to sustaining the long-term future and health of the Spinifex People. This exhibition is presented in association with Spinifex Arts Project.
Mowanjum Artists – Paintings and Prints
October 23, 2011 - November 16, 2011
Mowanjum Artists comprise the Worrorra, Wunumbul and Ngarinyin people of the north-west Kimberley, who are traditional owners and custodians of the Wandjina sites from this region. The paintings and prints in this exhibition represent the continuing tradition of cultural practice that links the people and the land through the Creation stories, expressed through the great painted rock art sites of the Kimberley. This exhibition is presented in association with Mowanjum Art and Culture Centre.
In Black and White
August 26, 2011 - October 12, 2011
In Black and White is Japingka Gallery’s review exhibition of indigenous artists whose paintings are created predominantly in black and white. A wide ranging group of desert artists are participating, from iconic and highly collectable artists through to new and emerging artists. Many are best known for signature styles that they have developed through their black and white paintings. Participating artists include Dorothy Napangardi, Gloria Petyarre, Mijili Napanangka Gibson, Lilly Kelly Napangardi, Helen McCarthy Tjalmuty, Ningura Napurrula and Anna Price Petyarre.
Bidyadanga Community Artists
August 26, 2011 - October 12, 2011
Donald Moko, Margaret Baragurra and Mervyn Numbagardi are the most senior of the artists working at the Bidyadanga Community Art Centre. Their work reflects their earlier lives in the desert, based on hunter-gatherer lifestyle and revolving around key waterholes on clan estates. Now the coastal community is focused on transferring the knowledge and culture of its elders through cooperation between generations at the art centre. This exhibition is presented in association with Bidyadanga Art Centre.
Alma Nungarrayi Granites – The Night Sky 2011
July 8, 2011 - August 17, 2011
Alma Nungarrayi Granites depicts Warlpiri stories of the night sky from Jukurrpa related to Yanjirlpirri, the Star Dreaming. These Jukurrpa are part of the knowledge base of the Warlpiri people of the Tanami Desert. Alma Nungarrayi Granites is the daughter of Paddy Japaljarri Sims and Bessie Nakamarra Sims, two of the founding artists of Warlukurlangu Artists. Alma has painted stories which have been passed down from her father, and her father’s father, for generations, all relating to the artist’s traditional country. This exhibition includes works by other artists from Yuendumu community and is presented in association with Warlukurlangu Artists.
Tangentyere Artists
July 8, 2011 - August 17, 2011
Tangentyere Artists represent paintings and stories from Indigenous artists of the Alice Springs Town Camps. The art centre provides art support and marketing to over 380 artists from 19 Alice Springs Town Camps. These camps are home to around 2,000 Indigenous people from the local area as well as many visitors from the remote communities of Central Australia. The Town Camp artists represent 20 different central Australian languages, and the stories they present in their paintings are a diverse and rewarding experience. This exhibition is presented in association with Tangentyere Artists.
Yinjaa-Barni – Pilbara Artworks
May 20, 2011 - June 29, 2011
Yinjaa-Barni Artists continue to refine and re-define the nature of their art and the images of their homelands. Located in coastal Roebourne in Western Australia’s Pilbara district, the country here spreads beyond the Fortescue River in an otherwise arid region of breakaway hills.
Julalikari Artists
May 20, 2011 - June 29, 2011
Tennant Creek artists Peggy Jones, Flora Holt, Lindy Brody and Susan Nelson make whimsical observations of their world in and around Tennant Creek along the Stuart Highway between Alice Springs and Darwin. In these paintings are images of country – bush medicine and bush tucker, birds and animals, soakages and ceremonies. Then there are images of the mission church, biblical stories, and images of modernity – family events with Toyotas and station wagons, road trains and the railway line. The artists are represented by Julalikari Arts Centre, operating as a regional hub for the Barkly region, a huge expanse of nearly 300,000 square km between the tropical Top End and the arid Red Centre in the Northern Territory.
Tjapaltjarri Brothers
April 8, 2011 - May 11, 2011
Their ‘first contact’ story is extraordinary. A group of nine Pintupi people who had lived a traditional lifestyle near Lake Mackay in the Gibson Desert, dramatically made contact in 1984 with their relatives near Kiwirrkurra. The community quickly realised that the group were relatives who had been left behind in the desert twenty years earlier. The family group were four brothers, three sisters and two mothers. The boys were in their teens – one subsequently returned to the desert, and three have gone on to become well known artists – Warlimpirrnga, Walala, and Thomas Tjapaltjarri. This is their story.
Aurukun Artists
April 8, 2011 - May 11, 2011
Aurukun artists from the north-west coast of Cape York Peninsula have developed a distinctive style of sculpture and painting. The works have emerged from items which were used solely for ritual ceremony, to become expressions of life and art as experienced by the clans of coastal northern Queensland. This exhibition of paintings features the work of four women artists – Akay Koo’oila, Janet Koongotema, Rebecca Wolmby and Jean Walmbeng. The exhibition is presented in association with Wik and Kugu Art Centre.
Jack Dale Mengenen
February 18, 2011 - March 30, 2011
Senior Ngarinyin man Jack Dale Mengenen stands as a walking history of the great upheavals that shook the Kimberley during the twentieth century. Born sometime around 1920, Jack Dale has seen the frontier violence, the move to station life and the threat to traditional culture, all of which have marked Aboriginal lives during this time.
Katherine Marshall Nakamarra Exhibition 2011
February 18, 2011 - March 30, 2011
Katherine Marshall Nakamarra, the daughter of highly-acclaimed Pintupi artist Walangkura Napanangka, has been painting since 1986. Her father, Johnny Yungut Tjupurrula, was also a painter, as were her mother’s sister, Pirrmangka Napanangka, and her grandmother, Inyuwa Nampitjinpa. Similarities can be seen between Katherine’s work and the bold style of other Papunya Tula artists, particularly that of her mother. This is especially evident in the way the paint is applied in thick, joined dots.