Artists

"Celebrating life, creativity and country"

Tjanpi Desert Weavers is a vibrant not-for-profit Aboriginal social enterprise of the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council (‘NPYWC’), an organisation supporting Aboriginal women living in remote communities of Central Australia.

Adjunct Professor Wayne Quilliam is one of Australia’s most respected Indigenous photographers/artist/curators/videographers and cultural advisers working at a local, national and international level. His award winning career includes the coveted National NAIDOC Indigenous Artist of the Year, nominated as a Master of Photography by National Geographic, winner of Business of the Year for the Australian Indigenous Minority Supplier Council and finalist in numerous photographic and art awards.

Jessica Birk is a young Indigenous artist born in 1984 on the Northern Beaches of Sydney. Jessica is a proud descendant of the Yaegl people from The Clarence Valley in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales (‘NSW’). Through her art Jessica asserts herself as a contemporary storyteller of the Yaegl people. Through her art-making she explores the extent to which she can imprint her identity and personal experiences, as well as the notions of belonging and familial lineage, upon the imagery, the colours, the patterns and the forms in her work.

Natalie Puantulura is an artist from the Tiwi Islands, located 80 kilometres north of Darwin. Her paintings tell the ‘Jilamara Body Paint Story’. During ceremony on the Tiwi Islands a series of 'yoi' (dances) are performed; some are totemic (inherited from the person's Mother) and some serve to act out the narrative of newly composed songs. Participants in these ceremonies are painted with ‘turtiyanginari’ (the different natural ochre colours), using a wooden Pwoja comb (also called Kayimwagakini, meaning ‘bone’).

Jack Dale Mengenen was born in the bush on Mount House Station about 1923. His mother, Moddera, was an Indigenous woman traditional to the Komaduwah clan estate that falls within the Mount House Pastoral Lease. .Jack's father, Jack Dale the frontiersman, according to oral accounts was a hard living man, concerned for little more than the moment.

Arone Meeks is a Kuku Midigi man, currently residing in Cairns. He grew up near El Arish, in far north Queensland, although his country is the area around Laura, Cape York. He completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts at the City Art Institute in Sydney in 1984 and has forged an impressive national and international career since. Meeks' practice includes painting, sculpture, drawing and public art commissions as well as linoprints, etchings and monoprints. His work employs both traditional images and themes arising out of his concern with the issue of land rights.