Review: Yolngu Power is one of the most stunning exhibitions of 2025

A tiny community that's had an enormous impact on the Australian art world is being celebrated in a landmark exhibition now on display.

The Indigenous northeast Arnhem Land community of Yirrkala in the Northern Territory is home to the Yolngu people, who represent one of Australia’s oldest continuous cultures and maintain strong ties to their ancestral lands, seas, and sacred sites.

The small but mighty community (population 657) gained national attention for its political activism in the 1960s, when Yolngu leaders submitted the 1963 Yirrkala bark petitions to the Australian Parliament, protesting the government’s land excision for bauxite mining without consultation, a major milestone in the Indigenous land rights movement.

Today, Yirrkala remains a vibrant cultural centre, celebrated for its bark painting and sculpture. Now it is getting its due as the subject of, in my humble opinion, one of the most stunning exhibitions of the year.

The stunning exhibition spans some 300 works by 98 artists. Picture: Dave Wickens

Yolngu Power: The Art of Yirrkala at the Art Gallery of NSW runs until October 6 and is a superb survey of over 80 years of artistic innovation and cultural resilience. A blockbuster of 300 works by 98 artists, it offers profound insight into Yolngu culture, where art serves as a means of storytelling, identity, and expression. Perhaps most importantly, it highlights the enduring connections in Australia between politics and art, as well as the vital role art can play in diplomacy and activism.

Yalu, an immersive digital installation by The Mulka Project, in the Nelson Packer Tank beneath the Naala Badu building, introduces the exhibition and Yirrkala. Most of us will never visit Yirrkala, but this makes you feel as if you have, guiding viewers throughYolngu Country’s seasonal rhythms with visuals, ancestral songs and ambient sounds that highlight land and sea cycles.

Rarrirarri (2023) is the centrepiece of the exhibition. Picture: Diana Panuccio

The centrepiece is an exquisite digital installation, Rarrirarri (2023), by The Mulka Project, created in collaboration with late Yolngu artist and Elder, Mrs Mulkun Wirrpanda. It takes the form of a sculpted gundirr (termite mound), onto which animated projections of botanical, animal, and spiritual designs are cast.

The exhibition highlights the evolving role of women artists like Nonggirrnga Marawili and Dhambit Mununggurr, both highly sought-after by art collectors, and whose work challenges tradition through vibrant pigments and modern materials. Their workunderlines the real Yolngu power, its ability to adapt and evolve.

Wanapati Yunupingu’s brilliant engravings on discarded metal street signs for example, blend traditional techniques, as they sit in dialogue with traditional ochre bark paintings and intricately decorated larrakitj (hollow poles).

Yolngu Power: The Art of Yirrkala runs until October at the Art Gallery of NSW. Picture: Dave Wickens

Tips for visitingYolngu Power at the Art Gallery of NSW

Go on a Wednesday for Art After Hours and take advantage of a two-for-one ticket available for visits to the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes 2025; 5pm-10pm.

Stay at Ace Hotel, the perfect hotel for art lovers, with special commissions and unique art on every floor. Eat at Akti, at Woolloomooloo Wharf, has contemporary Greek food with harbour views. 

Originally published as Review: Yolngu Power is one of the most stunning exhibitions of 2025