Photo: NGV Australia’s Wurrdha Marra 

Exploding with cultural impact, NGV Australia’s Wurrdha Marra (‘Many Mobs’ in the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung language) gallery space is breathtaking.  These vast and vibrant works from First Nations peoples are stop you in your tracks symbolic, storytelling of past and present. Artworks include both recognised and emerging artists.  Stylistically too there are new, bolder forms of expression while retaining traditional iconography and practices.

One gallery holds Timo Hogan’s large black & white salt lake landscapes of his sacred ancestral territory, Lake Baker in Western Australia.

Photo: Timo Hogan “Lake Baker”

Lindsay Harris’ “Ngan-karlap Coaring (My place Kwolyin)” painting is striking. He grew up in Kwolyin (WA), a once thriving community, now deserted. This work Some Cry Longer than Others #2 depicts a remembered home landscape. Gosh it’s good, I was immobilised with admiration!

Photo: Lindsay Harris  Some Cry Longer than Others #2

In the quiet of The Artist Room, there’s a collection titled “The Colour of Memory” by Sally Gabori. The exhibition commemorates ten years since (Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda) Gabori passed away. I sat in the dark, in awe, contemplating the authenticity in narrative.
          
Photos: Sally Gabori’s “Colour of Memory”

The Sally Gabori “Colour of Memory” Exhibition is on until 26 August.

The Bark Salon
As if there wasn’t enough wonder in Wurrdha Marra, at the back of the gallery is The Bark Salon – over 150 works, inspiration in abundance requiring time to take it all in.

Bark painting is significant in preserving Aboriginal culture. Traditionally on bark from eucalyptus trees, these paintings have meanings for identity, storytelling of creation, ancestral beings, social structures, as well as for burial rituals and other ceremonies.

With the eucalypt bark as ‘canvas’, natural ochres, minerals and clays are used for pigments. Brushes too are made from bark, along with natural materials including human hair for painting detail.

Historically prominent in Arnhem Land, bark painting has expanded amongst First Nations artists into a wider creative form of much interest to museums, galleries and collectors.  While maintaining traditional methods, contemporary artists incorporate other techniques and materials such as acrylic and polymer paints.
          
Photos:  The Bark Salon

I’m going back. I want to sit in The Bark Salon with a sketch pad, focussing on what individually captivates, learning from the textures and brushstrokes.

Wurrdha Marra is at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia
Ground Level.  Open daily 10am–5pm    www.ngv.vic.gov.au

“We were born on the Manta, 
born on the Earth.
And never mind our country is in the desert, that’s where we belong,
in the beautiful desert country.
The learning isn’t written on paper…
…we carry it instead in our heads and we’re talking from our hearts, for the land.”
Fighting for Culture – Emily Munyunkga Austin
“Elders” – Wisdom from Australia’s Indigenous Leaders

Photo: Art in Wurrdha Marra, The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia

© 2025 text and photography Pamela Reid