Spinifex Arts Project Aboriginal artists from Australia receive shows at National Arts Club
ReDot Fine Art Gallery, in partnership with The Spinifex Arts Project Aboriginal Corporation and the National Arts Club in New York, presents two distinguished senior Pitjantjatjara artists from the Spinifex community: Timo Hogan and Kunmanara Patju Presley. “Kaṉparkanya – The Wanampi”—a solo exhibition by Timo Hogan—and “Paltjuliri”—a solo exhibition by Kunmanara Patju Presley—will be on view at the National Arts Club from March 4 through April 23, 2026.
“Kaṉparkanya – The Wanampi” and “Paltjuliri” present a rare dual opportunity to experience the spiritual depth and visual élan of contemporary Australian Indigenous art from the remote outback community of Tjuntjuntjara in Western Australia’s Great Victoria Desert.
“These paintings carry the profound Tjukurpa of Spinifex Country—stories of sacred sites, ancestral journeys, and unbreakable connections to the land that have sustained Pila Nguru for generations,” Spinifex Arts Project’s Art Centre Manager, Olivia Sproull, and Studio Manager, Riley Adams Brown, commented. “Bringing these important stories to international audiences not only honors the mastery and cultural authority of these senior artists, but also strengthens the community’s voice, fostering greater understanding and respect for Indigenous resilience far beyond the Great Victoria Desert.”
Assembled over four years, the meticulously curated selection of over 40 large-format paintings honors Kunmanara Patju Presley, who has recently walked on, for his enduring cultural legacy and celebrates Timo Hogan’s remarkably rapid ascent as an artist of global renown. These two solo exhibitions are the most expansive showcase of the works of these internationally collected Australian contemporary artists to date, and their first-ever overseas solo shows.
“Highlighting these incredibly talented Indigenous artists reflects our more than 127-year mission to shine a light on artistic traditions and voices that have too often been overlooked, and to bring this work to new audiences,” Concetta Anne Bencivenga, the NAC’s Executive Director, said.
Timo Hogan, winner of the prestigious 2021 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, is renowned for his meditative depictions of Lake Baker (Pukunkura), a sacred salt lake for which he holds traditional cultural custodianship. Rendering his sweeping ancestral vision in a largely monochromatic palette activated by intricate layering and a subtle chromatic accent, Hogan evokes the site’s spiritual resonance and vastness, grounded indelibly in his cultural custodianship of the site Tjukurpa (Dreaming stories), inviting comparisons to the contemplative, immersive color fields of Mark Rothko’s oeuvres or the hypnotic minimalism of Agnes Martin.
In contrast, the late Kunmanara Patju Presley, an esteemed senior lawman and custodian of ancestral tradition, imbued his canvases with an electrifying vitality. Employing a painting technique that features cascades of hypnotically rhythmic dots, Presley summons epic creation narratives: the migrations of ancestral emus, the sinuous paths of water serpents, and the mythic sojourns of other primordial beings that populate Tjukurpa (Dreaming stories).
Evoking the vast landscapes of the Great Victoria Desert, Presley’s paintings envision its epochal history and metaphysical power through a shimmering pointillistic screen and its shifting blocks of color, suggesting the energetic surfaces of Abstract Expressionism while remaining deeply rooted in Indigenous understandings of Spinifex country and its ancient law.
This focused presentation celebrates the singular mastery of these two extraordinary artists and the enduring cultural resilience of the Pila Nguru (Spinifex People): a community of First Australians exiled from their nomadic homelands by British nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s, collected from the desert and forcibly resettled in a series of government and mission outposts, and who successfully pursued a 21st century Native Title Determination that permitted their return to a home country steeped in tradition.
ABOUT THE NATIONAL ARTS CLUB
Founded in 1898, the National Arts Club is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a mission to stimulate, foster, and promote public interest in the arts and to educate people in the fine arts. Each year, the Club offers more than 150 free programs to the public, including exhibitions, theatrical and musical performances, and lectures and readings, attracting over 25,000 visitors from New York City and beyond.
ABOUT REDOT FINE ART GALLERY
Established in 2004 by Giorgio Pilla, ReDot Fine Art Gallery is the only gallery in Singapore and the Asia-Pacific region dedicated exclusively to contemporary Australian Indigenous art. It specializes in artworks by First Nations artists—past, present, and emerging—sourced exclusively from community-based, non-profit art centers in Western Australia, the Northern Territory, Queensland, and the Central and Western Deserts.
The gallery’s mission is to celebrate and preserve Indigenous heritage, offering global audiences an inclusive space to engage with this vibrant modern art movement via paintings, sculptures, prints, and textiles.
For more information, please visit www.redotgallery.com.
ABOUT SPINIFEX ARTS PROJECT
The Spinifex Arts Project is an Indigenous-owned and managed, not-for-profit initiative based in Tjuntjuntjara, a remote community in Western Australia’s vast Great Victoria Desert. Established in 1997 amid the Spinifex People’s fight for land rights, it originated as a creative tool to support their successful Native Title claim over 55,000 square kilometers of ancestral homelands.
Senior men and women collaborated on large-scale paintings, serving as visual evidence of their unbroken cultural and spiritual connections to Country, especially after displacements caused by mid-20th-century British atomic testing at Maralinga. Today, the project empowers over 40 senior and emerging artists to preserve and share Tjukurpa (Dreaming stories) through bold acrylic works featuring intricate dotting, vibrant colors, and narratives of sacred sites, ancestral journeys, and resilience.
By fostering intergenerational knowledge transfer, it promotes cultural continuity, community empowerment, and global recognition.
For more information, enquire via studio@spinifexartsproject.org.au.
