A portrait by renowned photojournalist Mervyn Bishop of Batchelor Institute (BIITE) broadcasting student Joseph Gwadba from Goulburn Island hangs near a necklace of delicate shells by Palawa artist Bianca Templar.

These are a few of the 45 artworks making up the exhibition Golden Years: commemorating BIITE’s 50th anniversary through the BIITE Art Collection. Launched mid-August to coincide with BIITE’s 50th anniversary symposium Learning Journeys, Land & Language, Golden Years offers a glimpse into a first-class art collection, which is itself a formidable window into BIITE history and the key formative and relationships at the heart of its identity.

BIITE curator Maurice O’Riordan says: “The exhibition also commemorates the various ways this unique collection has come about.”

The exhibition displays works that have been directly commissioned by BIITE, including Tiwi artist Estelle Munkanome’s Untitled ochre on linen painting from 2003 and, more recently, a series of 50th anniversary-related drawings by artists (and BIITE staff) Donnie McGinness and Homere “Lily” Wosomo. It includes gifted works such as Water Dreaming (early 1980s), an acrylic painting by pioneering Papunya-based artist Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula — a gift from the NT Administrator’s Collection.

Also featured are works acquired through BIITE’s artist-in-residence program and from BIITE students. The latter includes works that express the student experience and philosophy of BIITE, such as Ngarti artist Marjorie Menmuir’s Water of the Spirit (2009) linoblock print.

“Empowerment comes from knowledge,” Menmuir writes of this work. “It flows—it’s liquid, like water. It’s spiritual.”

Golden Years celebrates the collection as a growing resource with the inclusion of recently acquired work by Yunupingu and Templar, as well as by Gloreen Campion and Hedley Brian, Anthony Duwun Lee, Arthur Jalyirri Dixon and Joanne Nasir, among others. In a notable twist on the famous painted doors from Yuendumu, the exhibition also presents four doors painted by broadcasting and journalism students, salvaged from BIITE’s former Indigenous Media Unit at Batchelor.

The exhibition is accompanied by the first significant collection-related publication, All my Country, the Batchelor Institute Art Collection. The title comes from the book’s editor-in-chief Dr Ngatkali Wendy Ludwig, a Kungarakan and Gurindji woman from Darwin and committed lifelong advocate for First Nations education, training and arts.

“The BIITE Art Collection, in all its wonderful diversity, essentially celebrates and affirms the artists’ connections to and longing for Country,” says Ludwig.

All my Country aims to bring the collection to a wider audience and scholarly appreciation through commissioned essays by Gary Lee, Chips Mackinolty, Pat Torres, Joanna Barrkman and Maurice O’Riordan. The publication also commemorates BIITE’s 50th anniversary, with its production assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.

Golden Years shows at Coomalie Art Centre, Batchelor Institute, Batchelor until 10 October 2024, open Wednesday-Saturday 10am-3pm.

Inquiries: maurice.o’riordan@batchelor.edu.au