Born around 1924 at Mirdidingki on Bentinck Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori lived a traditional Kaiadilt life until missionaries forcibly removed her entire community to Mornington Island in 1948. She did not pick up a brush until 2005, at around age 81, with no prior two-dimensional art tradition to draw on. In eight years she made more than 2,000 works, represented Australia at the Venice Biennale, and earned a retrospective at the Fondation Cartier in Paris.
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Tony Albert was born in 1981 in Townsville, Queensland, a descendant of the Girramay, Yidinji and Kuku Yalanji peoples. He grew up collecting kitsch objects depicting Aboriginal people from secondhand shops, coined the term "Aboriginalia" for this material, and built it into the foundation of his art practice. In 2012 he became the first Aboriginal Australian appointed as an official war artist. His permanent public memorial Yininmadyemi stands in Hyde Park, Sydney.
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Understanding the Frontier Wars is central to understanding Australian history, yet for generations this history was minimised or excluded from mainstream education. One of the most valuable resources available to educators, students, and the wider public is the podcast Frontier War Stories.
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Paddy Nyunkuny Bedford was born around 1922 at Bedford Downs Station in the East Kimberley, a Gija lawman who spent decades as a stockman before his paintings were discovered on a rubbish tip in the late 1990s. He began painting on canvas in his mid-70s and in eight years became one of the most significant artists in Australian art, with work commissioned for the Musée du quai Branly in Paris and a major retrospective at the MCA Sydney in 2006.
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Located near Derby in the Kimberley region, the Mowanjum Arts Centre represents three major language groups: Worrorra, Ngarinyin, and Wunambal.
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Each August in Darwin, on Larrakia Country, more than 75 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art centres set up booths inside the Darwin Convention Centre and sell directly to the public.
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The Warmun Aboriginal Art Centre is a thriving, self-sustaining art center owned and run by the Gija people. Founded in 1998, the centre is a cooperative venture that supports contemporary Australian Indigenous painting by established Warmun artists.
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Bula'Bula Arts in Ramingining, Arnhem Land, is home to the Aboriginal Memorial at the NGA and the community of David Malangi, whose work appeared on the $1 note.
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Trevor Nickolls was born in Port Adelaide in 1949, a Ngarrindjeri man who spent his early career entirely within Western art traditions before a 1979 encounter with Warlpiri painter Dinny Nolan Tjampitjinpa transformed his practice. He coined the phrase "Dreamtime to Machinetime" to describe the collision of Aboriginal tradition and urban industrialisation, and in 1990 became one of the first Aboriginal artists to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale. Artist Brenda L Croft called him the father of urban Aboriginal art.
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Born in 1952 at Mumeka in West Arnhem Land, John Mawurndjul learned to paint in the late 1970s under his brother and uncle at Maningrida Arts and Culture. His radical extension of rarrk cross-hatching across the entire bark surface transformed the tradition and earned
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