Yinjaa-Barni Art and Yarn

Event & Pop Up Gallery

The Quarter, 10am-3pm, All ages, FREE

Pop-in for a yarn with artists from the Yinjaa-Barni Art Aboriginal Centre and enjoy a selection of their exhibited works while they paint.

Yinjaa-Barni Art is a collective of Aboriginal artists who predominantly belong to the Yindjibarndi language group and whose ancestral homelands surround the Fortescue River and Millstream Tablelands. Based in Roebourne, a small town in Western Australia’s Pilbara region of the Northwest of the state, the Yinjaa-Barni artists create deeply personal works of collective memory, rendering the wildflowers, river systems and landforms of their country onto canvas. In the Yindjibarndi language, ‘yinjaa-barni’ means ‘staying together’.

Yinjaa-Barni Art began painting together at Roebourne’s Pilbara Aboriginal Church in 2004, before moving to the heritage-listed Dalgety House on the banks of the Harding River in 2007. A peaceful space where artists paint together, Yinjaa-Barni is home to cross-generational talent. Yindjibarndi elders and senior artists Maudie Jerrold, Allery Sandy and the late Mr Mack (1952 - 2019) were part of the inception of the region’s Aboriginal art movement and embody important cultural knowledge in their artwork.

For the senior members of the group, art is an important means of expressing and relaying love for their Country, their culture, and the flora of the region. They use this, along with storytelling, as a way of passing on their knowledge to the younger generations, who are rapidly gaining recognition as artists.

YBA artists have an open studio workshop area which is open to the public on weekdays. Visitors can watch the artists paint and hear more about their stories. This is hugely important way of sharing their knowledge of their mother land and making sure these stories continue to be heard.

Yinjaa-Barni artists have exhibited nationally and internationally and have won multiple awards between them, with high profile artists Mr Mack, Allery Sandy and Melissa Sandy nominated for one of the country’s most prestigious Indigenous art prizes, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, and works by Aileen Sandy, Maudie Jerrold and Mr Mack held by the Art Gallery of Western Australia.