The Art Gallery of New South Wales invites audiences to discover the strength, beauty and innovation of Yolŋu culture in Yolŋu power: the art of Yirrkala – a landmark exhibition celebrating one of Australia’s most internationally acclaimed arts communities, Yirrkala, in north-east Arnhem Land, Northern Territory. Yolŋu power: the art of Yirrkala is running from 21 June – 6 October 2025 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
The major exhibition brings together almost 300 works created by 98 extraordinary Aboriginal artists over eight decades. Spanning multiple generations and art forms – including bark paintings, drawings, prints, and sculpture in both wood and metal, alongside video works and immersive digital installations – it traces the history of art from Yirrkala.
Yolŋu power: the art of Yirrkala is presented in partnership with the Aboriginal-owned art centre Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala, established in the 1970s during the land rights movement as an act of Yolŋu self-determination. Decades earlier, artists at Yirrkala were among the first Indigenous Australians to employ art as a political tool, notably through the Yirrkala Bark Petitions of 1963 sent to the Australian Parliament to assert Yolŋu custodianship of country.
Curated by the Art Gallery’s head of First Nations, Cara Pinchbeck, the exhibition traces both the continuity and diversity of artistic practice in Yirrkala from the 1940s to today. It marks key moments when artists consciously altered their practice, such as the recent innovative use of reclaimed materials and metal led by senior artist Gunybi Ganambarr, while highlighting familial connections and cultural continuation.
The exhibition also demonstrates how Yolŋu artists have used art for politics and petition, as seen in the works from the Saltwater Collection of 1997–98 that document Indigenous sea rights, and Maḏarrpa leader Djambawa Marawili’s push to produce a new aesthetic that allowed the next generation of artists to explore new ways of working.
Exhibition visitors can deepen their experience by visiting Yalu, a dramatic and immersive light and sound installation that brings the colours and songs of Yolŋu country to the Nelson Packer Tank, the former wartime oil bunker beneath the Art Gallery’s Naala Badu building.
Yalu is newly commissioned from the collective of Yirrkala artists and digital producers known as The Mulka Project, founded in 2007 within the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre as a digital production studio and living audiovisual archive. Today, The Mulka Project employs the latest technologies to realise complex time-based artworks such as Yalu.
Yalu can mean a crocodile nest, a termite mound, a womb, or a home – a sanctuary that protects new life. Grounded in these ideas of sanctuary, origin and kinship, Yalu evokes the shifting cycles of land and sea and the interconnected flow of culture in this special installation, which is open from 21 June to 20 July 2025 with free entry.
The exhibition is accompanied by a beautifully illustrated comprehensive publication ($49.95) that offers a range of perspectives on the art of Yirrkala. Contributors include Maḏarrpa leader Djambawa Marawili in conversation with Kade McDonald; exhibition curator Cara Pinchbeck; and Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre coordinator Will Stubbs.
Yolŋu power: the art of Yirrkala is supported proudly by the NSW Government through its tourism and major events agency, Destination NSW. The exhibition is presented in partnership with the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre.
Yolŋu power: the art of Yirrkala is on display at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in the Ainsworth Family Gallery in Naala Badu from 21 June to 6 October 2025. Tickets are now on sale, including discounted 2-for-1 tickets on Wednesday evening for Art After Hours, Mobtix and Gallery Pass tickets that provide entry to both Yolŋu power: the art of Yirrkala and Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2025.
More information: artgallery.nsw.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/yolngu-power/events
