4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony

The 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony is a National Gallery of Australia touring exhibition showcasing stunning new work by First Nations artists from across the country at The University of Queensland Art Museum from August 27 to November 26, 2022.

Curated by Arrernte and Kalkadoon woman Hetti Perkins, in collaboration with National Gallery curators, Ceremony is showing exclusively at The University of Queensland Art Museum for its Queensland leg of the tour.

The expansive exhibition brings together a diverse range of artists working in a variety of art forms including sculpture, painting, ceramics, moving image, photography and more.

Dancer and choreographer Joel Bray has developed a new screen-based work that explores his embodied relationship to Country as a queer Wiradjuri man.

In a first for the renowned Papunya Tula art centre, Mantua Nangala has created a major new triptych depicting a significant ancestral women’s site near the salt lake Wilkinkarra/Lake Mackay in remote Western Australia.

Artists from the Yarrenyty Arltere and Tangentyere Artists collectives have collaborated in Mparntwe/Alice Springs to create a soft sculpture in the form of a Blak Parliament House – an Aboriginal take on Australia’s political heartland.

Wiradjuri artist and writer S.J Norman will present his Bone Library installation, featuring cattle and sheep bones inscribed with Walgalu words to interrogate the impacts of colonisation on culture and Country.

Darrel Sibosado’s work Ngarrgidj Morr (the proper path to follow) transforms traditional Bard shell carving designs into a series of large-scale light sculptures and highlights the contemporary relevance of cultural practices – not as something static or historical, but as living expressions of the Bard people and their continued connection to Country.

Hayley Millar Baker’s Nyctinasty is an intensely personal work drawing on Millar Baker’s lived experience of connection to spirits and ancestors.

In her work, Margaret Rarru Garrawurra expresses the innovative potential of contemporary fibre art. Crafted from natural materials harvested from her homelands of Yurrwi/Milingimbi and Laŋarra/Howard Island, they embody the confluence of past and present, the old and the new.

Good to know - The National Indigenous Art Triennial is the National Gallery's flagship exhibition series. Led by a First Nations curator, the exhibition brings together commissioned work by established and emerging First Nations artists from across Australia, creating an important platform for art and ideas.

The University of Queensland Art Museum is a valued partner of Must Do Brisbane.com

Image credits - top to bottom:

Joel Bray, Wiradjuri people, Giraaru Galing Gaanhagirri (still), 2022, commissioned by the National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra for the 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony, created in consultation with Uncle James Ingram and Wagga Wagga Elders, and with support from City of Melbourne, Phillip Keir and Sarah Benjamin (the Keir Foundation), City of Port Phillip, Create NSW, Blacktown Arts, Arts Centre Melbourne, and Yirramboi Festival 2020, image courtesy and © the artist

Dylan River, Kaytetye people, Untitled (Bungalow), 2022, commissioned by the National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra for the 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony with the support of the American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia with the assistance of the Christopher and Francesca Beale Private Foundation, image courtesy and © the artist

Mantua Nangala, Pintupi people, Untitled (detail), 2021, commissioned by the National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra for the 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony with the support of Sue Dyer and Steve Dyer, purchased 2021, image courtesy the artist and Papunya Tula Artists © the artist and Aboriginal Artists Agency Ltd

Darrell Sibosado, Bard people, Ngarrgidj Morr (the proper path to follow), 2022, commissioned by the National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra for the 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony, image courtesy and © the artist

Margaret Rarru Garrawurra, Ḻiyagawumirr-Garrawurra peoples, Mol Miṉḏirr, 2020, image courtesy the artist and Milingimbi Art and Culture © the artist, photograph: Grant Hancock