APY Lands exhibition opens
The APY Lands Indigenous art exhibition has finally opened at the National Gallery after three years of investigations and a $4.4 million lawsuit, and its arrival is reigniting debates about cultural representation and institutional responsibility. That matters because the dispute isn’t just legal — it’s reshaping how major museums handle provenance, community consultation, and who gets to tell Indigenous stories. (x.com)
Three years after the National Gallery of Australia pulled the brakes on the show, Ngura Puḻka — Epic Country opened in Canberra on April 11 with 30 large-scale paintings by 49 artists from the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands, Coober Pedy, and Adelaide. The gallery says the exhibition will run for 19 weeks. (abc.net.au) The delay started in April 2023, when a 50-second video published by The Australian appeared to show a non-Aboriginal staff member applying paint to an artwork and discussing creative choices. The National Gallery then postponed the show, which had been due to open in June 2023. (abc.net.au) The key point is that the painting in that video was not one of the works under review for the exhibition. The gallery’s independent review instead examined 28 other paintings that had been selected for Ngura Puḻka. (abc.net.au) That review was led by arts law experts Colin Golvan and Shane Simpson for the National Gallery. Their conclusion was blunt: the 28 paintings had “no credible direct evidence” against their provenance and complied with the gallery’s provenance standards. (nga.gov.au) The reviewers said every artist they interviewed told them, without qualification, that the works were theirs and that white staff had not taken over authorship. The report also said the artists it spoke to were senior cultural custodians who were protective of Tjukurrpa, the body of law, story, and ceremony embedded in the paintings. (nga.gov.au) Even so, the review did not clear up every argument around the Adelaide studio run by the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Art Centre Collective. The report said broader concerns about studio operations and management were outside its scope and more suited to separate government scrutiny. (abc.net.au) The legal fight is now running on a second track. In November 2025, the APY Art Centre Collective sued Nationwide News, the publisher of The Australian, and journalist Greg Bearup for $4.4 million, alleging 33 articles defamed the organisation and caused financial damage. (abc.net.au) According to the court filing described by ABC, the collective says the reporting cost it up to $375,000 in grants, hurt sales, and contributed to the exhibition’s delay. Nationwide News says it stands by the reporting and will defend the case in the Supreme Court of South Australia. (abc.net.au) What visitors see now is an exhibition built around scale and community authorship. National Gallery curator Tina Baum said 29 of the 30 works are three metres by three metres, and artist Sandra Pumani described her painting as a story about the home where she grew up. (abc.net.au) The reopening also lands after another APY-linked project already filled a major National Gallery space in 2025: Kulata Tjuta: Tirkilpa, a many-spears installation involving more than 100 Aṉangu men across the APY Lands. That matters inside the museum because the gallery is no longer showing APY work as a single painting on a wall, but as large collaborative projects tied to Country, ceremony, and intergenerational making. (nga.gov.au; abc.net.au)
