Breaking Ground: Artists from the Desert Country

Naarm/Melbourne & Gadigal/Sydney: D Lan Galleries will present Breaking Ground: Artists from the Desert Ranges, an exhibition across its Sydney and Melbourne galleries from 17 September to 16 October 2026, bringing together nineteen senior artists from the seven art centres of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands.

Presented as two complementary exhibitions, D Lan Galleries in Sydney will feature paintings by senior women artists, including Maringka Baker, Tjungkara Ken and Wingu Tingima, while D Lan Galleries in Melbourne will present works by senior men, including Jimmy Donegan, Tiger Yaltangki and Robin Kankapankatja.Together they focus on works created between 2006 and 2015,a pivotal period that reveals the extraordinary breadth, innovation and individuality of contemporary APY painting while recognising the distinct custodial relationships each artist holds to Ancestral Law and knowledge.Alongside the exhibition is a program of public events, including Art Night presentations in both Melbourne and Sydney, and a special in-conversation on Saturday 19 September in Melbourne with Dr Diana James and Marita Baker, daughter of the late, great Tjungu Palya artist, Jimmy Baker.Breaking Ground traces artistic practice geographically from west to east across the seven art centres—Ninuku Arts, Tjungu Palya, Tjala Arts, Ernabella Arts, Kaltjiti Arts, Mimili Maku Arts and Iwantja Arts—revealing how artists working from shared cultural foundations developed profoundly individual visual languages. Many of these artists are represented in Australia’s leading public collections, yet their significance has not always been reflected in the secondary market.Vanessa Merlino, Curator at D Lan Galleries said the exhibition reflects decades spent working alongside artists and communities across the APY Lands and a belief that this period produced some of the most innovative and exciting works from Australia’s remote art-producing regions.“Through the lens of a single collection, Breaking Ground reveals the extraordinary individuality of artists working across the APY Lands during a remarkable period of artistic development. It also points to a much longer history. This artistic flourishing did not emerge from nowhere: Anangu communities have long histories of enterprise, adaptability and self-determination. The art centres provided a new framework for that agency to be expressed culturally, artistically and economically. These artists were innovators whose work helped reshape contemporary Australian art.”Highlights include an important early painting by Tiger Yaltangki, created before the figurative style that later defined his practice; a significant work by respected cultural leader Robin Kankapankatja; Jimmy Donegan’s Pukara(2012), painted following his historic Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award win; an early Tjungkara Ken painting that foreshadows her 2016 NATSIAA victory; and a major work by Maringka Baker, one of the leading senior artists associated with Tjungu Palya.Accompanying the exhibition is a newly commissioned essay by leading APY scholar Dr Diana James (Australian National University), positioning it within the broader cultural and art-historical development of the APY Lands. D Lan Galleries Curator Vanessa Merlino will open the exhibition and present a guided tour of the works in Breaking Ground on Thursday 17 September from 6-8pm at D Lan Galleries in Sydney.