ARTIST TALKS
Yarrenyty Arltere Artists Fashion Show at the Desert Mob 2023 Artist Talks. Photo by Rhett Hammerton, courtesy Desart
FRIDAY 12 SEPTEMBER
Araluen Arts Centre THEATRE
10AM – 3:30PM
TICKETED EVENT
Desert Mob Artist Talks is an unmissable opportunity for audiences to hear firsthand from Aboriginal artists and special guests about their work and projects, community and country. Artist Talks offers rich context to Desert Mob through presentations, interviews, film, and performance.
Parts of this event are Auslan-interpreted
2025 ARTIST TALKS PROGRAM:
Not a secret one,
just a story one
Arlpwe Art &
Culture Centre
Ned Kelly Jungarrayi started painting regularly in 2024, at the age of 79. Peter Corbett Jabarula had worked at Arlpwe Art and Culture Centre for over a decade before he took to painting in the same year at 64 years of age. After a decades-long career in health services, ‘Doctor’ Graham Bealsey Jabarula joined Arlpwe 10 years ago and has experimented in painting and sculpture. Through their art, these senior men have found an outlet for documenting and sharing their wealth of lived experience and cultural knowledge. Join us as they discuss their extraordinary lives and how they came to painting later in life.
Image: Ned Kelly Jungarrayi in the studio at Arplwe Art & Culture Centre, Ali Curung, in front of his work, West from Jarra Jarra outstation (where those two Jungarrayis started walking) 2025, 122 x 183 cm, synthetic polymer paint on linen. Photography by Sara Maiorino, courtesy of Desart
Heart of glass
Selinda Davidson
Ninuku Arts
Selinda Davidson shares her journey as a glass artist at Ninuku Arts, reflecting on how glass has become a powerful medium for her innovative storytelling. Through residencies and mentorships, including with South Australian glass artist Clare Belfrage at JamFactory, Selinda has developed a distinctive practice using etching and layering techniques to create textured designs inspired by the tali tjuta (many sandhills) of her country. She shares her experience of the process of working with glass in the studio at the art centre and on country, and how it offers a new surface for Tjukurpa to be creatively expressed.
Image: Selinda Davidson, Tali Tjuta, 2024, enamel on glass, 28.5 X 21cm. Courtesy of Ninuku Arts & JamFactory
Against the odds |
25 years of
Purple House
Papunya Tula Artists
+ Purple House
Twenty-five years ago, Papunya Tula Artists commissioned a series of major works to support a fundraising initiative to establish dialysis services in the Western Desert. Despite much scepticism, over a million dollars was raised at the auction and since then the Purple House organisation has grown to include twenty remote communities across the NT, WA. Purple House Directors and artists, Marlene Nampitjinpa and Bobby West Tjupurrula (also a director of Papunya Tula Artists), reveal the vital role art centres play in remote area communities.
Image: (L-R) Robert Nanala Tjapaltjarri, Tjumpo Tjapanangka, Kanya Tjapangati, Charlie Wallabi Tjungurrayi, Patrick Tjungurrayi, Brandy Tjungurrayi, Johnny Yungut Tjupurrula, Bobby West Tjupurrula and Charlie Ward Tjakamarra (obscured) at Kiwirrkura in front of Kiwirrkura men’s painting 1999, synthetic polymer paint on linen, 257 x 212cm. Photograph by Paul Sweeney, courtesy of Papunya Tula Artists and Purple House
Antala-iperra (Weather)
Hermannsburg Potters
Hermannsburg Potters present their animation Antala-iperra (Weather), which tells stories of the seasons on Western Aranda Country. The animation depicts the animals, bird life, reptiles and plants that can be found at different times throughout the year. Over six months, artists painted each scene onto terracotta tiles using underglazes in Hermannsburg Potters’ distinct style. In this edition, the artists have added spoken and written names in both Western Aranda and English for all the life and activity depicted in Atala-iperra, offering a dynamic record of country and cultural knowledge.
Image: Irntaakupma (thorny devil) by Judith Inkamala. Still from Antala-Iperra – Weather (educational version 2025), Hermannsburg Potters. Courtesy of Hermannsburg Potters and Studio Peeki
The power is
in our hands
Iwantja Arts +
NPY Women's Council
Ngangkari are the traditional healers of the NPY Lands in Central Australia. For thousands of years, ngangkari have looked after the physical and emotional health of their people. Ngangkari shared their stories for the first time in Traditional Healers of Central Australia: Ngangkari – a collection of firsthand accounts which traces personal histories from pre-contact times to the present. Iwantja Arts artists and ngangkari Betty Muffler and Maringka Burton join NPYWC editorial committee members and fellow ngangkari and artists Pantjiti Lewis and Jennifer Mitchell, to celebrate the forthcoming second edition of this book in story and song.
Image: Cover of Traditional Healers of Central Australia: Ngangkari, new edition, with photography by Rhett Hammerton, published by NPY Women’s Council
Belonging
to fire |
40 Years of Warlukurlangu Artists
WARLUKURLANGU ARTISTS
Current chair of Warlukurlangu Artists, Wendy Nungarrayi Brown, joined by Nancy Napurrula Oldfield, Sabrina Napangardi Granites and Reanne Nampitjinpa Brown, offers a personal insight into the founding of the art centre by her parents and other senior Yuendumu leaders 40 years ago. Since that time, the art centre has grown to represent over 800 artists who maintain the legacy of intergenerational cultural knowledge and learning for the Warlpiri and Anmatyerr people of Yuendumu and the surrounding region – as Wendy states, ‘to keep law and culture strong, so that we would know where we come from and the places and stories we belong to’.
Image: The Yuendumu school doors painters, (L-R) Paddy Jupurrurla Nelson, Roy Jupurrurla Curtis, Paddy Japaljarri Stewart, Paddy Japaljarri Sims, Larry Jungarrayi Spencer, circa 1987. Courtesy of Warlukurlangu Artists
Urapuntja |
Utopia Today
UTOPIA ART CENTRE
In September 2025, Utopia Art Centre officially opened its new gallery and studio in Arlparra adorned with architectural commissions by local artists, including Motorbike Paddy Ngal. This milestone is one of several significant achievements by the artists of the Sandover region this year. In July, a retrospective exhibition of the work of Emily Kam Kngwarray was opened at Tate Modern, London. Artists Jedda Kngwarray Purvis, Jean Kngwarray Purvis, art worker Loretta Pitjara Jones and director Joyce Pitjara Jones, are joined by Warumungu and Luritja curator of the Kngwarray exhibition, Kelli Cole, to discuss a decades-long journey from batik to painting, and the local to London.
Image: The new Utopia Art Centre building at Arlparra featuring art screens by Motorbike Paddy Ngal, designed by Kaunitz Yeung Architecture. Courtesy of Utopia Art Centre
Colour mwerre |
Good colour
Yarrenyty Arltere Artists
The artists of Yarrenyty Arltere transform everyday materials into covetable works of art and fashion through a unique combination of dyeing, stitching, embroidery and imagination. Art worker Vanessa Splinter hosts a parade that tells the story of this town camp art centre and the story of each unique piece in the Yarrenyty Arltere capsule collection. Founding artist, Marlene Rubuntja, leads a cohort of artists and friends, including Rhonda Sharpe, who represented Yarrenyty Arltere as part of the Australian First Nations delegation supported by Indigenous Fashion Projects at the World Expo 2025, in Osaka, Japan.
Image: Yarrenyty Arltere Artists fashion show at the Desert Mob Symposium, 2023. Photo by Rhett Hammerton, courtesy of Desart
