Warlurkurlangu Artists
Warlukurlangu Artists is one of the longest running and most successful Aboriginal-owned art centres in Central Australia.
Established in 1985 Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation is a not-for-profit organisation that is 100% Aboriginal-owned by its artists from the remote desert community of Yuendumu in Central Australia. Our main business is to promote the maintenance of local Indigenous culture by producing beautiful Aboriginal Art which is then sold around Australia and the world!
Warlukurlangu Artists is famous for its gloriously colourful acrylic paintings and limited edition prints. The Aboriginal art centre has a national and international profile and its art has been featured in hundreds of exhibitions and publications in Australia and around the world.
Warlukurlangu means ‘belonging to fire’ in the local language, Warlpiri, and is named for a fire dreaming site west of Yuendumu.
Artworks
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Artist Profile/s
Julie Nangala Robertson
Julie Nangala Robertson is one of five daughters born in Yuendumu in 1973 to well-known Telstra Award winning artist, Dorothy Napangardi (Dec 2013). Since the late 1990’s, while often in the company of her talented mother, Julie has pursued and developed a creative visual language of her own, one which consists of a fascinating blend of stylised experimentation and ancient narrative.
Usually an aerial perspective along with a more recently and established distinctive monochromatic pallette, Julie’s current paintings (which depict the topographical features of her traditional country at the site of Pirlinyanu) have become works of extraordinary optical brilliance as she alternates the size of dots throughout her work as well as building up specific shapes or reference points often repeated with overdotting.
Julie has been painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre located in Yuendumu, since 2007. She paints her mother’s Jukurrpa stories, stories that have been passed down to her by her mother and all the mothers before them for millennia. Her work has been included in numerous collections and exhibitions of Aboriginal Art in both Australia and overseas.
Karen Napaljarri Barnes
Karen Napaljarri Barnes was born in 1992 in Lajamanu, a remote Aboriginal community in semi-arid country on the edge of the Tanami Desert 1000km north-west of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. She moved to Yuendumu, 700km south, after finishing school in Lajamanu, to be with her family. She has been painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed Art Centre, since 2001. She is the grand-daughter of Warlukurlangus’s famous artist Judy Napangardi Watson and they would sit together painting at the Art Centre every day when Karen first started painting. Karen paints the dreaming stories handed down to her by her family for generations of millenia, stories which come from Mina Mina, country west of Yuendumu of which her family are the custodians. She also paints Karnta Jukurrpa (Women’s Dreaming), Wakulyarri Jukurrpa (Wallaby Dreaming), Ngarlajiyi Jukurrpa (Bush Carrot Dreaming). Karen loves sport, especially basketball and softball, and is an avid football spectator, barracking for Lajamanu.