What is Aboriginal Art

Aboriginal art is the world's oldest continuous art tradition. Spanning at least 65,000 years, it encompasses rock engravings, body painting, sand drawing, bark painting and the acrylic paintings on canvas and linen that are now collected by galleries and institutions across the world. It is not a style. It is a living cultural practice through which Aboriginal people record, transmit and celebrate their connection to country, ancestry and the Dreaming.

Every painting is also a map, a story, a legal document and a spiritual act. The ochre on a canvas, the dot that marks a waterhole, the arc that represents a person seated - these are not decorative choices. They are a language with tens of thousands of years of continuous use.

A history beginning before history

The oldest known examples of Aboriginal art are the rock engravings at Murujuga (the Burrup Peninsula) in Western Australia, estimated at up to 50,000 years old, and ochre pigments found at Madjedbebe rock shelter in the Northern Territory, dated to at least 65,000 years before present. Rock art sites exist across the entire continent - in Kakadu, in the Kimberley, in the Flinders Ranges - telling stories of animals, ancestral beings and ceremonies across an unbroken span of human occupation.

For most of this history, art was made on bodies, on sand, on rock and on bark. It was inseparable from ceremony, from law and from the daily transmission of knowledge between generations. The making of art was a communal, functional act embedded in the fabric of daily and ceremonial life.

The contemporary Aboriginal art movement as it exists today began in 1971 at Papunya, a remote community west of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. A schoolteacher named Geoffrey Bardon encouraged senior Warlpiri and Luritja men to paint their Dreaming stories onto hardboard and canvas. The Papunya Tula Artists cooperative was formed in 1972 and is still operating today. From that single community, the movement spread across the Western Desert, the APY Lands, Arnhem Land, the Kimberley and eventually to Aboriginal communities across the entire continent. You can read more on our Papunya Tula page.

What does Aboriginal art mean?

The meaning in an Aboriginal painting operates on multiple levels simultaneously. At the most visible level, a painting depicts country - the specific landscape, waterholes, sacred sites and ancestral paths that belong to the artist and their family. A Warlpiri woman from Willowra painting her grandmother's Dreaming is mapping real geography. The circles are waterholes. The lines are paths between them. The U-shapes are people, seated in the traditional way.

At a deeper level, the painting encodes Dreaming stories - the journeys of ancestral beings who created the landscape and established the laws that govern it. These stories are not mythology in the Western sense. They are living law. The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies recognises more than 250 distinct Aboriginal language groups across Australia, each with their own Dreaming traditions. To understand them is to understand the art. Our What is the Dreaming page explains this in depth.

At a deeper level still, some paintings carry restricted knowledge - ceremonial information not intended for public view. The dot fields that became a signature of Western Desert painting were originally developed as a way of sharing the surface of a Dreaming story while protecting its sacred core. The same painting reads differently depending on who is looking and what they are permitted to know.

Regional styles and traditions

Aboriginal art is not one style. It is hundreds of distinct regional traditions, each rooted in a specific country and community.

The Western Desert and Central Desert tradition - which includes the APY Lands of South Australia and communities like Yuendumu, Papunya and Kintore in the Northern Territory - is characterised by the use of dots, concentric circles and ground maps. Artists encode their Dreaming stories using a shared visual vocabulary of symbols. Works from this region by senior artists are among the most collected in the world. Our APY Lands page introduces the artists and country we work most closely with.

Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory has its own distinct traditions rooted in different ancestral stories. The most distinctive style is rarrk - the fine crosshatching of lines applied in natural ochres of red, yellow, white and black. The Kimberley region is known for its Wandjina figures - large, white-faced ancestral beings associated with rain and the creation of life. The Tiwi Islands have a distinctive tradition connected to the Pukumani burial ceremony, characterised by bold geometric designs.

A significant contemporary movement has also emerged from urban Aboriginal artists working across paint, photography, printmaking and digital media - bridging Aboriginal and Western art traditions in ways that continue to evolve. The National Gallery of Australia holds one of the most significant public collections of Aboriginal art in the world and is a valuable resource for anyone wanting to deepen their understanding.

Key symbols in Western Desert painting

While the precise meaning of symbols varies between language groups and artists, a number of forms recur across Central and Western Desert paintings. Concentric circles represent waterholes, campsites or sacred sites. U-shapes depict a person seated on the ground, seen from above. Straight or curved lines show paths and journeys - the movement of ancestral beings across country. Animal tracks record the presence of specific creatures connected to a Dreaming story. Dots, originally used to conceal sacred ceremonial elements, became a defining visual element of Western Desert painting in their own right.

Our Dot Painting page explores the history and meaning of this tradition in more depth.

Dreaming stories in art

Most Aboriginal paintings are visual expressions of Dreaming stories. When an artist paints their country - its waterholes, sacred sites, ancestral journeys, plant and animal life - they are painting their Dreaming. The symbols in a painting are not decoration. They are a language encoding knowledge about country, law and ancestral events that has been passed down through generations.

Among the most significant and widely painted Dreaming stories are the Seven Sisters Dreaming, one of the oldest and most widespread stories in Aboriginal Australia, and the Mamungari Dreaming, a Women's Dreaming story of the APY Lands. The Songlines that connect these stories to country cross the entire continent.

Buying Aboriginal art

Authenticity in Aboriginal art means the work was made by an Aboriginal person with the cultural right to paint the story depicted, and sold with appropriate documentation. A reputable gallery will provide the artist's name, community, language group and their connection to the story - along with a Certificate of Authenticity that is traceable back to the source.

Our guide How to Buy Authentic Aboriginal Art covers everything a collector needs to know.

Aboriginal art as a long-term holding

Original paintings by significant artists have appreciated substantially over time. Works by artists including Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Rover Thomas and Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri have achieved strong results at major auction houses. Scarcity, cultural significance and growing international recognition underpin the long-term market. Collectors who understand their collections - who can speak to the stories and the artists - build the most enduring holdings.

Art by Farquhar

Art by Farquhar is a specialist gallery for original Aboriginal paintings from the Central Desert of the Northern Territory and the APY Lands of South Australia. Every work comes with a Certificate of Authenticity and full provenance documentation. We are members of the Australian Aboriginal Art Association and ship worldwide.

Our gallery is at 1070 South Road, Edwardstown SA, open Monday to Friday 9:30am-4:30pm, Saturday 10am-1pm and Sunday 12pm-3pm.

Browse the collection or contact us at sales@farquhar.art.