[FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 8, 2025] Irriṯitja Kuwarri Tjungu: Contemporary Aboriginal Painting from the Australian Desert opens at The Grey Art Museum at New York University on January 22, 2026. Organized by the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia in partnership with Papunya Tula Artists, Irriṯija Kuwarri Tjungu—a Pintupi phrase meaning “past and present together”—is the result of a thirty-year association between the two organizations.
The exhibition is the first in the US to survey Papunya Tula Artists, one of Australia’s most globally recognized Aboriginal art cooperatives. For the past fifty years, Papunya Tula Artists—the oldest Aboriginal-owned arts organization in Australia—has stood at the forefront of contemporary Aboriginal art, and a new generation of artists continue to create awe-inspiring works today. Irriṯitja Kuwarri Tjungu: Contemporary Aboriginal Painting from the Australian Desert celebrates one of the world’s greatest stories of resilience, self-determination, and the power of art.
Irriṯitja Kuwarri Tjungu features over 80 artists and some 120 works produced between 1971 and 2021, including masterworks by leading artists such as Mantua Nangala, Makinti Napanangka, Yukultji Napangati, Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri, and Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula. Works in the exhibition are arranged based on geographic and social ties. By juxtaposing multiple representations of the same (or related) subjects across multiple generations of artists, the exhibition surfaces key insights on the development of style, motif, and aesthetics over fifty years of Papunya Tula Artists.
Reflecting on the exhibition’s impact, Henry F. Skerritt, Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Virginia and Curator of Research at Kluge-Ruhe, says, “The international success of Aboriginal art has been the single most effective tool in making mainstream Australians aware of the unbreakable ties between Aboriginal people and their land, along with the ancestral connections that underpin this worldview.”
The township of Papunya was founded in 1959 as a settlement for Aboriginal people of diverse backgrounds and languages who were relocated from their desert homelands. In 1971, a small group of Aboriginal men began painting their ancestral designs with acrylic paint on scraps of cardboard, Masonite, and linoleum. Painting offered a way of asserting authority: of explaining who the townspeople were and where they came from amid this chaotic mélange of strangers. In 1973 the group founded their own company, Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd, the first Aboriginal-owned art cooperative in Australia. From these humble beginnings, a multimillion-dollar industry would emerge, changing the face of contemporary art and creating a powerful voice for Indigenous artists that reverberates into the present.
The impact of this movement is beautifully captured by Punata Stockman Nungurrayi, artist and daughter of founding artist Bill Stockman Tjapaltjarri: “These old men had a picture in their mind from Country and ceremony, and they were starting to think about how they were going to do that new form of painting. They started the style of painting that we are now doing. From there, it blew up like a balloon. They started small, and from small they blew up. From Australia to the United States, overseas, like a balloon.”
Today, artists from Papunya Tula travel the world and their artworks have been included in exhibitions such as Documenta and collected by institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Hood Museum of Art. Every major state institution in Australia includes works by these remarkable artists and their descendants, who continue the tradition of painting. The success of the company has not only created economic success, but allowed important investment in health and community development in the remote desert communities of Kintore and Kiwirrikurra.
A highlight of Irriṯitja Kuwarri Tjungu is The Papunya Tula Fiftieth Anniversary Suite, which is made up of 50 works by 50 leading contemporary artists and was commissioned for the exhibition. This suite of canvases creates an epic picture of collective knowledge and the power of community.
The exhibition also includes two well-known artworks exclusive to the Grey’s presentation: Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula’s Water Dreaming at Kalipinypa (1972) and Michael Jagamara Nelson’s Five Stories (1984). Michael Nelson’s iconic Five Stories is one of the most reproduced Aboriginal artworks in existence and has not been shown in New York since the 1988 exhibition Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia, organized by the South Australian Museum in partnership with the Asia Society. At the time of its creation the work contained several pictorial innovations, including the use of yellow dotting to outline graphic elements, and a wide array of highly original infill techniques. These techniques bring together into a single, coherent image five different ancestral narratives that intersect on the artist’s homelands.
Johnny Warangkula’s Water Dreaming at Kalipinypa is part of the artist’s well-known series, Water Dreamings. Using sinuous strokes and shimmering dotting, Warangkula captured the presence of abundant plant life following desert rains, cementing the dot as a defining feature of Aboriginal art. The painting’s historical significance is underscored by the fact that it twice made Australian national headlines when it sold for world-record auction prices in the 1990s and 2000s.
An illustrated publication, Irrititja Kuwarri Tjungu (Past and Present Together): Fifty Years of Papunya Tula Artists accompanies the exhibition. Published by University of Virginia Press and edited by Fred Myers (NYU Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and renowned cultural anthropologist), and Henry Skerritt (Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Virginia and Curator of Research at Kluge-Ruhe), it celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of Papunya Tula Artists. The catalog includes essays and contributions by John Kean, Steve Martin, Elizabeth Marks Nakamarra, Narlie Nelson Nakamarra, Eileen Napaltjarri, Charlotte Phillipis Napurrula, Punata Stockman Nungurrayi, Rachel Paltridge, Hetti Perkins, Cara Pinchbeck, Margo Smith, Marina Strocchi, Paul Sweeney, Morris Jackson Tjampitjinpa, Joseph Jurra Tjapaltjarri, Bobby West Tjupurrula, and Jodie Napurrula Ward.
Irriṯitja Kuwarri Tjungu: Contemporary Aboriginal Painting from the Australian Desert is organized by the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia in partnership with Papunya Tula Artists. The presentation at the Grey Art Museum is made possible in part by generous support from the Charina Endowment Fund; an Anonymous Family Foundation; John and Barbara Wilkerson; D’Lan Contemporary, New York; Salon 94; and the Abby Weed Grey Trust.
EXHIBITION DATES: Brigham Young University Museum of Art, Provo, UT: July 18-December 6, 2025; The Grey Art Museum, New York University, New York, NY: January 22-April 11, 2026; The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK: September 26, 2026-April 2027
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Media Contact: Laura Snyder, ljs7f@virginia.edu
Header image: MICHAEL JAGAMARA NELSON, Five Stories, 1984, acrylic on canvas, 47.6 x 71.6 in. (121 x 182 cm). Collection of an anonymous charitable foundation. © the artist’s estate and licensed by Aboriginal Artists Agency Ltd. Photo by Tom Cogill.