Mudburra artist Arthur (Jalyirri) Dixon (b. 1994) grew up in the remote Northern Territory community of Marlinja, near Elliott, around 700 km from both Alice Springs and Darwin. He grew up in a creative family, using music for storytelling and a vehicle for keeping Mudburra, one of the world’s oldest languages, alive. Both his father Ray Dimakarri Dixon and sister Eleanor Dixon are accomplished singer/songwriters.

Arthur employs gestural mark-making in evocative abstract paintings which are both large and small-scale. He generally paints off-stretcher and his work features both subtle tonal shifts and contrasting pigments, some areas of canvas left raw.

Arthur uses the Mudburra word ngurramarla to describe his work, a term which refers to ancestral connection and the channeling of creativity through this connection. It’s a term which reflects the heightened state of Arthur’s expressive act of painting and, in turn, his underlying inspiration to connect with and care for Country. Arthur’s paintings are mostly untitled and highly intuitive rather than literal in their expression of ngurramarla. Ngurramarla was the title given to his first two paintings to be publicly exhibited, as part of the 2023 DesertMob exhibition in Alice Springs – an indication of his emerging status and remarkable freedom and confidence as a painter.

Eleanor Jawurlngali is a Mudburra and Garrawa woman from Marlinja in the Northern Territory, a small community almost exactly halfway between Alice Springs and Darwin. She is primarily a singer, known for her ethereal vocals through songs in Aboriginal languages and English which blend traditional and contemporary influences. A member of the critically acclaimed Kardajala Kirridarra, an all-female band comprising musicians from Marlinja and Kulumindini (Elliot), and of the father/daughter duo Rayella, Eleanor also collaborates with celebrated guitarist Mick Turner (Dirty Three) and cellist Stephanie Arnold. 

Visual arts is a new field of creative expression for Eleanor, though she draws on a strong artistic tradition (particularly through painting) from her grandmother. Having worked with the Tennant Creek Brio artists in various capacities previously, Eleanor had an impressive exhibition debut, showing alongside Brio artists at Cassandra Bird Gallery, Sydney in March 2024. Her latest work builds on this momentum, offering an experimental approach and originality that, as with her music, packs a potent blend of traditional and contemporary insights. 

Ray Dimakarri Dixon is a veteran of the Australian music scene, a member of the ’80s rock group the Kulimindini Band from Elliott who were inducted into the Hall of Fame at the 2008 National Indigenous Music Awards. In more recent decades Ray has collaborated with his daughter Eleanor for the celebrated duo, Rayella, and with the theatre group Finucane & Smith, bringing his music in Mudburra and English to ever-growing audiences.

As a visual artist Ray is better known in his home community of Marlinja for his carving. This exhibition marks both his exhibiting debut and his first body of works as a painter which are striking in their vibrancy, confidence and originality. At one level these works are a response to the salvaged mining plans and related papers on which Ray makes his mark. His music has long campaigned for Country and these paintings are similarly impassioned and politicized. In his boldness of line and patterning we may see some influence in his carving background along with a newfound freedom in expressing story and emotion through the richness of colour. 

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