Past Exhibitions

Yipapirraya arnuwujaputi... Tide going out, tide coming in…

FROM THE GROUND UP

FROM THE GROUND UP explores the interconnection between the environment and visual arts practice in the Northern Territory. It investigates how contemporary art – and more broadly culture – in the Northern Territory is shaped by the ground upon which we
live.

Building the building

Building the building, a visually engaging display that traces the history of CDU over the past fifty years. The display is in the new Charles Darwin University city campus, Danala | Education and Community Precinct (ECP), in the heart of the city of Darwin.

Manburrba: Our story of printed cloth from Bábbarra Women’s Centre

Manburrba: our story of printed cloth from Bábbarra Women’s Centre celebrates how Maningrida women have mastered the design, lino-block and screen-printing mediums over almost four decades. It is a story of women’s empowerment and how they have harnessed contemporary textile art forms to transmit ancient stories and knowledge.

Gurindji freedom banners

Gurindji freedom banners in partnership with Karungkarni Arts and Culture, retell the story of the historic Wave Hill Walk-off in 1966. The 10 iconic banners on display tell the Gurindji account of the ‘walk-off’, which was led by Vincent Jurlama Lingiari AM with Gurindji, Ngarinyman, Mudburra, Bilinara and Walpiri workers from Wave Hill Station, located in the Victoria River District on the northern edge of the Tanami Desert. 

Where Lakes Once Had Water

Where Lakes Once Had Water contemplates how the Earth is experienced and understood through difference ontologies – ways of being, seeing, sensing, listening and thinking – that reverberate across art, Indigenous though, science, ancient and modern cultures, the non-human, and in between. - Sonia Leber and David Chesworth

Capturing Nature

Taken from the Australian Museum’s extensive archival collection of glass plate negatives, 67 large-format photographic prints showcase the scientific discoveries of Australian Museum scientists between the 1850s and 1890s, while also telling the story of the advent of photography in the young colony, less than 10 years after the birth of photography in Europe.

Shock & ore

With an authoritative and defiant hand, Shock & ore bursts forth a hype of guerrilla theatre. It calls on the heroes of the old world and new. 

long water: fibre stories

Collectively, long water celebrates the stories of regeneration and continuation of important cultural traditions, and the strong women and vital water places that sustain them.

DRAWN

DRAWN from the Charles Darwin University Art Collection celebrates drawing as a means by which to slow down, observe the world and draw into being - with hand-made marks - that which we see, sense and experience.

YOU ARE HERE

YOU ARE HERE is an exhibition with truth-telling at its core. Artivist, Therese Ritchie, factually examines Australia’s frontier wars and the massacre of Indigenous peoples alongside the nation’s history of coal extraction and infrastructure development implemented by European settlers, mining companies and successive Australian governments. YOU ARE HERE is an unflinching examination of how we got to where we are now.

John Mawurndjul: I am the old and the new

John Mawurndjul: I am the old and the new presents a survey exhibition by one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists – master bark painter John Mawurndjul AM.  This landmark touring exhibition includes over 50 works, spanning forty years of the artist’s practice.

Bitumen & Dirt

Bitumen & Dirt – Wayne Eager: 30 Years in the Territory is a survey exhibition of paintings and prints by prominent Alice Springs-based landscape artist Wayne Eager. Featuring 78 works from public and private collections around Australia, including 13 from Charles Darwin University Art Collection, the exhibition charts Eager’s career since he first arrived in the Northern Territory in 1990.

Salon des Refusés 2020

The Salon des Refusés 2020 is the iconic companion event to the prestigious Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA) has grown in prominence since its inception in 2013,

PLACE

PLACE is an exhibition that celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Charles Darwin University Art Gallery and is a celebration of the gallery reopening after a forced COVID-19 closure.