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Home / Exhibitions / Inked - Araluen Collection

Inked - Araluen Collection

INKED is the last exhibition of the year, it focuses on limited edition prints drawn from the Araluen Arts Centre Collection.
Featuring works from Indigenous and non-indigenous artists with a wide diversity of printing techniques.
There are 79 prints in this exhibition and a vast majority these artworks are exhibited for the first time since they have entered the collection. It is a great way to discover this particular part of the Araluen Collection.

Exhibition: 22 November - 2 February 2025

For centuries, artists around the world have used printmaking techniques to share ideas, tell stories, and make powerful statements. The subjects are varied, some hold Tjukurpa, others tell us something of the artist or their environment, others are political statements. The diverse techniques used to create limited edition prints combining ink on paper like woodblock, screenprint or lithography, allow for endless diversity and innovation.

The Araluen Arts Centre holds a substantial body of limited-edition prints – some 200 – by celebrated artists working across the country. INKED is a diverse snapshot of this part of the Araluen Collection. These artworks are a blend of multiplicity and individuality, each piece is a unique artwork or state as well as being part of an edition. Several of them are part of portfolios commissioned or created around particular themes and projects. One such example is the Bicentennial folio: prints by twenty-five artists commissioned by the National Gallery of Australia and the Australian Bicentennial Authority in collaboration with the Victorian Print Workshop (VPW) to consider the 200 years of European settlement in Australia in 1988. Some artists were reluctant to participate, but eventually embraced the opportunity to make a strong political statement, a protest against colonisation. First Nations artists, like Yolŋu artist Banduk Marika, demonstrated ongoing connection to Country while others chose to draw from their own diverse practices to create bold works like Mike Parr as he used this medium for the first time, while Barbara Hanrahan harnessed a printmaking career that started in 1960.

Also featured in INKED is a series of prints created to honour the memory of social realist painter and printmaker Noel Counihan and his political engagement with a variety of artworks made by fellow artists from Victoria using intaglio technics and lithography. While the prints created by First Nations artists in Central Australia expand on contemporary painting practice and deep knowledge of Country incorporating new technics introduced by visiting art workers like Neville Field who facilitated linocut prints with the Wiilu Arts Group in Kulpitarra Community in the mid-1990s. Featuring the works of celebrated artist Kumantjai H Pareroultja, who sadly passed recently, as well as Maureen Campbell and Kumantjai L Namatjira through the 1995 series Mana Putjarintja (Bush Food) – a unique testimony of connection to Country and knowledge of the stories they hold.

Initiatives like the Fire and Water Suite (2003) from Warlukurlangu Artists in Yuendumu present works that bridge cultural knowledge and storytelling with modern techniques. In the early 2000s, the Northern Editions printmaking workshop was established as part of the Northern Territory University (now CDU), Darwin, has played a significant role in this evolution, fostering the use of printmaking for First Nations artists to convey stories of Tjukurpa and Country in accessible and powerful ways.

Showcasing accomplished yet possibly overlooked local talents, such as Ludmilla Kooznetzoof-Hawkins, who explores the art of lithography and collagraphy through self-printed editions, and renowned national figures like John Wolseley, whose enduring connection to the Desert and its distinctive fauna spans decades. INKED brings together a compelling collection of works united by their celebration of diverse techniques that pay tribute to the vibrant multicultural heritage of our nation.

Cover Image: 
Barbara Hanrahan Small boy and girl 1987 linocut. From The Bicentennial Folio, Prints by Twenty-Five Australian Artists. Commissioned by The Australian National Gallery and the Australian Bicentennial Authority. Gift of the Australian Bicentennial Authority 1988.