Yalpirakinu : Adrian Jangala Robertson

Songlines XXXVI opens with Yalpirakinu, an exhibition of new work by the Australian aboriginal artist, Adrian Jangala Robertson (b.1962).

Adrian Jangala Robertson is an artist with Bindi Mwerre Anthurre Artists: a supported art studio in central Australia for First Nations artists living with disability. Here, Robertson finds his expression through painting. His emotive and freely-worked depictions of family and friends, and of the dramatic landscape of Central Australia, have an emotional intensity that has seen him dubbed ‘the Van Gogh of the Central Desert’.

Born at Papunya, an Aboriginal community in the Central Desert, in 1962, Adrian Jangala Robertson grew up amidst the founding fathers of the Desert Painting movement. (The movement - which saw traditional motifs being set down for first time in permanent and portable form, in paint on board - began at Papunya in 1971, initiated by a group of senior men from the community with the encouragement and engagement of the school art-teacher Geoffrey Bardon.) Robertson now lives in Alice Springs.

The artist’s a-temporal connection to his mother’s homeland of Yalpirakinu abounds with the profound spiritual knowledge that is part of his inheritance. With a unique and powerful intimacy, he depicts panoramic views and portraits of friends and relatives. Cloud-banks swell and float over red- mountain ridges speckled with bush shrub, or the flash of a ‘road train’ lorry on an unmetalled road. His vision is as loaded with memories of childhood as it is illustrative of the immediate surroundings.

Adrian Jangala Robertson is the recipient of numerous prestigious prizes for contemporary aboriginal art. In 2024, Roberson received a triple-nomination for the prestigious Wynne, Archibald and Sulman: an unprecedented achievement for an Aboriginal artist. Previous prizes include the Telstra Painting Award (2020), and the coveted Alice Prize in 2022. Yalpirankinu will mark his first solo exhibition outside of Australia.