Yirrkala is a small Aboriginal community on the northeastern tip of the Top End of the Northern Territory, approximately 700km east of Darwin.
The art has been developing quite an audience since the township was founded as a mission in 1935.
Work from this area was amongst the earliest commercial Aboriginal art marketed by Methodist Overseas Mission.
There is strong evidence to suggest that the art which emerged in the mid 1950s was a catalyst in the non-Aboriginal art world’s realisation that Indigenous Australian art is a unique and profound independent art tradition - the equal of any other global form.
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