Our story

Ngaruwanajirri means “Helping one another”

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.

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.

The art

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.

The artists

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.

Wurrumiyanga

Wurrumiyanga is the main town on Bathurst Island, the smaller of the two largest Islands in the Tiwi group. It is 80km north of Darwin accessible by air and is serviced also by ferry from Darwin.


Wurrumiyanga (previously called Nguiu) was the site of the first permanent non-Tiwi settlement as a Catholic mission established by Father Gsell from Alsace Lorraine in 1911. Some original mission buildings are still standing as well as the historic wooden church situated beside the beach, made from the Island’s timber, and used by Tiwi for 80 years. A history museum was established by Sister Ann Gardiner within the mission precinct and shows items of Tiwi culture and the mission in historical times.


The town has a relaxed village atmosphere in which the few roads have slowly walking families amongst the few cars as children go to and from the two schools, running and somersaulting. All over people can be heard calling out in their rhythmic Tiwi language.

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    Today Bathurst Island has two schools, a post office, a clinic, a club and a local shire office. It has a fluctuating Tiwi population of approximately 2000. 


    Tiwi are passionate about Australian Rules Football and have several teams. Football practice and the matches are perhaps the most attended and excitable events of each week. All of the Ngaruwanajirri artists have their team favourites. Grand Final day is a time of maximum visitors and high drama- as well as excellent art sales for Ngaruwanajirri artists.


    The Tiwi Islands Regional Council administers the Tiwi Islands townships. The Tiwi Land

    Council administers all matters outside the townships.

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