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Warakurna: All the Stories Got into our Minds and Eyes

Warakurna: All the stories got into our minds and eyes


WARNING: Visitors should be aware that this website includes images and names of deceased people that may cause sadness or distress to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.


Warakurna now showing in Canberra

7 December 2012 to 3 November 2013. Free. First Australians Focus Gallery.

Warakurna: All the Stories Got into our Minds and Eyes is an exhibition of contemporary paintings and sculptures that document a new art movement emerging from the Western Desert community of Warakurna.

An acrylic painting on canvas showing a landscape with a sun and three trees above a scene of two vehicles and groups of people.
Making Paintings, Purnu and Tjanpi, 2011, Roshanna Yinga Williamson, acrylic on canvas.

These paintings combine familiar Western Desert symbols and dots with a new, more figurative style, to recreate scenes of everyday life and to tell historical and contemporary stories.

More on the story themes

The works are the creative vision of a group of artists including Eunice Yunurupa Porter, Judith Yinyika Chambers, Dianne Ungukalpi Golding, Jean Inyalanka Burke and Dorcas Tinamayi Bennett.

More on the artists

The Warakurna paintings are not just art, they recount incidents and remember people that have impacted on the artists' lives.

View all the paintings

View all the objects

More about Warakurna

Ngurrangka-latju nyinarra tjamuku kaparliku ngurrangka. Tjukurrpa ngaparrku-ngaparrku nintira nyuntulu-yan kulira nintirrinytjaku. We are living in our grandfathers' and grandmothers' country. We are sharing our stories with you so that you can learn about them.

Eunice Yunurupa Porter

Colour photograph showing a group of 16 Aboriginal men and women, and a dog, standing in front of a bright-yellow corrugated iron structure.
Community artists at the Warakurna Artists Art Centre. Photo: Tim Acker.