This landmark exhibition, presents exciting new hand-printed Indigenous textiles from remote communities across far north Australia.

Community-led Aboriginal Art Centres in the Northern Territory first explored screen-printed textiles as a new creative medium in the 1960s. Today, these textiles are a nationally and internationally acclaimed form of cultural expression that provides sustainable economic, cultural, and social benefits to Indigenous artists, art centres and their communities.

Indigenous textile screen-printing is a dynamic art form that transcends the realm of simple utilitarianism. Rather, it inhabits a previously undefined space between the commonplace and the sacred. As a creative medium it brings together elements of art, design, fashion and craft, resulting in a unique art form that is accessible, adaptive and reproducible.

Indigenous artists who live and work in remote communities use a range of media including three-dimensional woven or carved objects, and two-dimensional works on bark, canvas, paper, and cloth. When working in textiles, these artists often impart the same strong cultural content and spirituality to cloth as they do to other more highly priced and celebrated artforms. The materiality and physical qualities of cloth also provides them with accessible pathways to share storylines about ancestral beings and country, identity, material culture, and life forms that include bush foods, animals, birds and marine life.

This exhibition reveals the specialised processes of design concepts through to production and shows how the aesthetic, cultural, and commercial significance of Indigenous screen-printed textiles contributes to the strength and sustainability of remote community enterprises in remote communities across north Australia.

Participating Artists

• 
  Carol Liyawanga

  17 artworks
• 
  Charmaine Pascoe

  4 artworks
• 
  Deborah Wurrkidj

  10 artworks
• 
  Jennifer Wurrkidj (dec)

  11 artworks
• 
  Josephine James

  9 artworks
• 
  Joy Garlbin

  21 artworks
• 
  Kylie Hall

  1 artwork
• 
  Lucy Yarawanga

  23 artworks
• 
  Rosanna Bonson

  4 artworks
• 
  Susan Marawarr

  14 artworks