Public Curators Building

Brush: Women Painters brings together a multigenerational group of artists from Cape York Peninsula and the Gulf of Carpentaria in Far North Queensland. Since the mid-1990s, these women have created important works of art that speak to a profound cultural and spiritual knowledge of the landscape, seasonal patterns, and sacred story places, while also reflecting the realities of remote community life.

For many, painting began as a predominantly self-taught practice, cultivated through a series of art centre–led painting workshops that encouraged women to translate their ancestral stories and knowledge of Country onto canvas. As a result, artists from these regions have produced a distinctive expression of Indigenous art that resists categorisation and differs significantly from other Indigenous painting movements across the country.

Bound by shared geography, kinship ties, and histories of displacement and adaptation, the artists in this exhibition each bring a unique perspective to contemporary painting. Their paintings carry memory and presence—not an idea of culture, but a lived experience of it. By presenting many of these works in dialogue for the first time, the exhibition seeks to unpack their individual yet interconnected stories, while exploring their shared creative output and innovation in colour, technique, and style.

Brush illustrates how these women have been central—not peripheral—to the development of contemporary painting practices in Australia.

Featured artists:
Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori
Naomi Hobson
Samantha Hobson
Janet Koongotema
Birrmuyingathi Maali Netta Loogatha
Thunduyingathi Bijarrb May Moodoonuthi
Rosella Namok
Mavis Ngallametta

Curated by Shonae Hobson, Consultant Curator.