Ngaruwanajirri Inc.

At Wurrumiyanga on Bathurst Island, one beautiful building known as the 'Tiwi Sistine Chapel' or 'The Keeping Place' houses a small group of Tiwi artists who attend daily to create artwork in a peaceful environment. Ngaruwanajirri means “Helping one another”

The artists are guided towards excellence in their finished artworks and are represented in State Galleries across Australia and over the world. Renowned for their use of traditional Tiwi cultural materials such as ground-up local ochre pigments, artists also work with a variety of contemporary media including wax and dyes on silk.

Artists produce paintings in both ochres and watercolours. Ochres are worked on both canvas and high-quality archival papers, while watercolours are exclusively archival paper. The Ngaruwanajirri prints includes hand painted lino cuts and, more recently, etchings through an etching workshop run by master printer Basil Hall. All works relate to Tiwi culture and arts practices including quirky wood carvings, notably Tiwi busts and Pukumani burial poles as well a variety of birds unique to the Island.

This Centre began in 1994 with funding for the support of Tiwi with a disability and the core attendants today are disability artists. They have each developed exceptional creative skill. Sometimes referred to as free, loose, naive, or Outsider art, the work of Ngaruwanajirri artists is unique. A separate group of able-bodied Tiwi carvers work alongside this core group in a purpose-built space adjacent to the Keeping Place creating both large and small carvings.