Barkly Groundswell: Group Show

Arlpwe Art Centre
Artists of Ampilatwatja
Barkly Regional Arts
Nyinkka Nyunga Art and Culture Centre
Utopia Art Centre

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Across 320km2 of mostly pastoral land the Barkly Region is Australia’s biggest local government area, but in such a remote and sparse region dotted with small Indigenous communities and even smaller outstations, it has been largely forgotten and under-serviced. Art in the Barkly Region is by no means a new discovery, though its history is riddled with cowboy operations, dodgy ethics and carpetbaggers who still have a presence in the region today. In spite of this - and against a backdrop of crooked governance, poverty, and a slew of negative press - some 200 resilient artists across five art centres have employed painting, printing, batik, drawing, sculpture, ceramics and traditional woodwork to express Country, culture and politics, producing some of Australia’s most exciting and important emerging artists.

The Barkly Region emphatically burst into the consciousness of Australian art circles in 1977 when a government-funded batik dying workshop brought together a group of Alyawarr and Anmatyerr women from the Utopia homelands. The later formed Utopia Women’s Batik Group would eventually take their talents to acrylic and canvas and produce a host internationally acclaimed artists, most recognizably Emily Kam Kngwarreye. In the last 25 years, The Artists of Ampilatwatja Community have developed the now widely recognised Ampilatwatja style of delicately dotted landscape and bush medicine paintings, which has been widely exhibited across Australia and abroad. More recently, historians have traced groundbreaking practice even earlier, dubbing master carver and painter ‘Tracker’ Nat Warano (circa 1880 – 1960) “the Namatjira of carving”1. In 1958, Warano presented artefacts to government officials at the opening of the Warrabri Settlement, now Ali Curung, a Baptist mission town where Aboriginal people from across the Barkly were relocated from their homelands or took refuge from massacres. A melting pot of Aboriginal nations, Warrabri was host to massive cultural ceremonies in the 1960s and 1970s, bringing together language groups from throughout the Barkly and beyond and today it is the home of Arlpwe Art and Culture Centre.

The pulse of these important waves of Barkly artistry is still alive in the art of today as songlines and family trees spread across the region. The establishment of 100% Indigenous owned Utopia Art Centre in 2020 established Aboriginal autonomy over arts practices in the homelands and a regular and regulated space for Utopia artists to thrive. The early Utopia artists’ abstracts are evidently in conversation with the work of current day Utopia artists, while their influence pulsates in the work of others in the region including, Aileen Napaljarri Long, Jessie Kemarr Peterson, Dayleen Kamara Miller and the Long sisters. Similarly, a line can be drawn between the Ampilatwatja style and the work of emerging artists from other art centres, especially that of landscape painters from Canteen Creek and Epenarra such as Agnes Pula Rubuntja and Ada Pula Beasley. Warano’s grandson, Joseph ‘Yugi’ Jungarrayi Williams, is a founding member of the men’s painting group, Tennant Creek Brio. Their blend of punk, graffiti and traditional Aboriginal aesthetics has seen the group’s meteoric rise as bad boys of Australian art culminate in their current survey show Tennant Creek Brio: Juparnta Ngattu Minjinypa Iconocrisis.

The Barkly uprising was perhaps most evident at this year’s National Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Art Awards. Seventeen artists from Barkly Region art centres were featured as finalists, including work from Nancy Nungarrayi Long and Rene Nungarrayi Long (highly commended) and Marcus Kemarre Camphoo (Arlpwe), Aileen Napaljarri Long (BRA), Motorbike Paddy Ngal (Utopia) and a collaborative work on paper by twelve ladies from Ampilatwatja; Ada Pula Beasley, Colleen Ngwarraye Morton, Denise Ngwarraye Bonney, Elizabeth Ngwarreye Bonney, Jacinta Pula Morrison, Julieanne Ngwarraye Morton, Kathleen Nanima Rambler, Kindy Kemarre Ross, Lulu Pitjara Teece, Michelle Pula Holmes, Rosie Kemarre Morton and Selina Pula Teece. These successes are compounded by other recent acclaim on the Australian art prize circuit, with Barkly Region artists being represented in the Wynne Prize, Sulman Prize, Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize, National Capital Art Prize and Hadley’s prize among others.

In Barkly Groundswell cbOne celebrates the recent upsurge of artistic power in the Barkly, highlighting emerging artist from Arlpwe Art and Culture Centre, Artists of Ampilatwatja, Barkly Regional Arts, Nyinkka Nyunyu Art and Culture Centre and Utopia Art Centre. The exhibition amplifies the diverse voices of these artists, showcasing contemporary paintings that are deeply personal and rich with cultural stories from this region. Barkly Groundswell runs from November 16th until December 7th.
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Essay Courtesy of Harry Price
Arlpwe Art Centre, Harry Price
Artists of Ampilatwatja, Meagan Jacobs
Barkly Regional Arts, Emerson Radisich
Nyinkka Nyungu Art and Culture Centre, Levi Mclean
Utopia Art Centre, Molly Burrage

1. Jorgensen, D. and Williams, J. (2022) ‘Rediscovering the art of Tracker Nat: the Namatjira of carving’, The Conversation, 4 July. Available at: https://theconversation.com/rediscovering-the-art-of-tracker-nat-the-namatjira-of-carving-184749.