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D LAN Galleries

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D LAN Galleries

A leading contemporary gallery specialising in Australian First Nations Art, with exhibition spaces in Melbourne, Sydney and New York.

D’Lan Contemporary hosts regular exhibitions of exceptional modern and contemporary art by Australian First Nations artists in Melbourne, and at partner venues in Sydney, Brisbane, and New York. D’Lan Contemporary also exhibits at Australian and international art fairs. With the view that Australian First Nations art can and should stand alongside the greatest art in the world, our aim is to engag

e and educate audiences, and to promote and elevate Australian First Nations art on a global stage. Our mission is to develop an inclusive and sustainable marketplace for Australian First Nations art, and to help support artists, artist estates and their broader working communities. Our vision is for D’Lan Contemporary to become a platform for the voices of Australian First Nations artists past and present, and a destination for discussion and discourse, with a programme of educational and engaging Exhibitions, Talks and Events. D’Lan Contemporary maintains strict ethical practices and exclusively sources, exhibits and sells works of art with impeccable provenance, to protect the artist, the buyer, and the market, from fraudulent sales or unethical procurement. We offer works of art for sale via exhibitions and by Private Treaty. If you are interested in selling or buying a work of art or a collection of works, please contact us at [email protected] for a confidential discussion or appraisal. And visit our website to read more about our Ethics Policy and Terms of Business.

27/08/2026

TIMOTHY COOK: KURLUWUKARI | Opening Event

Timothy Cook: Kurluwukari marks D Lan Galleries’ second solo presentation of the artist’s work. Our first, at Melbourne Art Fair 2025, presented his new large-scale bark paintings for the first time. Kurluwukari builds upon that exhibition, bringing bark and linen together in New York to reveal the continuity and ongoing experimentation within Cook’s practice.

It is a privilege to present this exhibition in collaboration with Jilamara Arts and Crafts Association (Jilamara ) and to bring this important new body of work to audiences in the United States.

We hope you can join us in New York for the opening event on Thursday 10 September, from 6-8pm, to experience these remarkable works in person. We are also thrilled to announce that we will be joined by Colin Heenan-Puruntatameri and Timothy’s grandson, Wally Brooks, as well as Jilamara Arts and Crafts Association’s Manager, Will Heathcote for a special evening celebrating this important artist and his work.

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We welcome you to browse the online catalogue now available via the link in our bio.

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Timothy Cook : Kurluwukari
10 September - 9 October
25 East 73rd Street
New York / Lenapehoking

Videography: Good Content | Photography and Video

26/08/2026

PRIVATE SALES | Emily Kam Kngwarray

These two works sit within the deeper, more restrained register of Emily Kam Kngwarray’s colour range. Dense indigo grounds, muted orange, and flashes of red emerge from shadowed, layered surfaces, giving the pair a sombre, introspective intensity.

Their palette recalls the group of ‘mourning period’ paintings associated with the presumed death of a young Kemarre man in 1991. Kngwarray was deeply affected by his loss, a grief compounded by the circumstances of his disappearance, which disrupted the customary mourning procedures that would ordinarily provide closure for the family and community.

Painted three years later, during the cold winter months, these paintings belong to a seasonal moment when Kngwarray’s thoughts often returned to family members who had passed away. Where the saturated colour of her ‘green time’ works speaks to abundance, these hold firmly to their darkness.

Rather than assigning fixed meanings to individual colours, these works reveal how seasons, memory and loss could converge within Kngwarray’s continually evolving painterly language for her Country.

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Emily Kam Kngwarray | Untitled 1994 | 90 x 120 cm (diptych)
©Emily Kam Kngwarray / Copyright Agency 2026

20/08/2026

Breaking Ground: Artists of the Desert Ranges | COMING SOON

Breaking Ground: Artists from the Desert Ranges brings together nineteen senior artists from across the seven art centres of the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands, drawn from a private Melbourne collection. Focusing on works created between 2006 and 2015, the exhibition considers a remarkable period of artistic development across the region. Works by senior women and senior men are presented separately in Sydney and Melbourne, reflecting distinct custodial relationships to Tjukurpa.

These artists shared cultural foundations in Tjukurpa—the ancestral Law and knowledge that connects people, Country, kinship, ceremony and responsibility—yet this shared ground did not produce a single visual movement. Across neighbouring communities, artists developed profoundly individual approaches to colour, composition, gesture and form, creating some of the most distinctive painting in contemporary Australian art.

Bringing together artists associated with Ninuku Arts, Tjungu Palya, Tjala Arts, Ernabella Arts, Kaltjiti Arts, Mimili Maku Arts and Iwantja Arts, Breaking Ground reveals the distinct histories and artistic communities that shaped this period. Many of these artists were already senior cultural figures, makers, teachers and community leaders when they began painting, bringing established knowledge, authority and histories of enterprise into the developing art-centre movement.

We are thrilled to announce the release of the exhibition catalogue on 7 September, offering the first look at this remarkable body of works. We look forward to sharing more details shortly…

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Breaking Ground: Artists from the Desert Ranges
17 September - 16 October

40 Exhibition Street, Melbourne / Naarm
97-99 Queen Street, Sydney / Gadigal

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Ray Ken, Kulata Tjuta, 197 x 198 cm (detail)
©Ray Ken/Copyright Agency 2026

19/08/2026

PRIVATE SALES | W***y Tjungurrayi

W***y Tjungurrayi carried a lifetime’s knowledge of Country, first walked west of Lake Mackway as a young man, and committed it to canvas in the early 1980s, continuing to do so for the next four decades until his death in 2018. This work, painted at Kintore in 2001, shows the artist at full maturity: line after line of deep red-brown and white ochre, close and controlled, building a surface that shifts under the gaze, akin to sandhill country under changing desert light.

The year before, in 2000, Tjungurrayi’s work had been included in Genesis and Genius at the Art Gallery of New South Wales - a landmark survey that placed Papunya Tula painting within a major state institution. In 2001, this painting extended that recognition, being included in Museum at Utopia Art Sydney alongside senior contemporaries such as Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri and George Tjungurrayi. The exhibition’s title made its argument explicity: this was major contemporary painting, not a separate category.

Untitled 2001 is a strong example from a pivotal period in Tjungurrayi’s career.

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To enquire about this artwork, we welcome you to contact [email protected]

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W***y Tjungurrayi | Untitled 2001 | 152 x 183 cm
©W***y Tjungurrayi / Licensed by Aboriginal Artists Agency Limited

17/08/2026

In Conversation | Lucy Foster & Dr. Maia Nuku, Evelyn A. J. Hall and John A. Friede Curator for Oceanic Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collections of the Arts of Africa, the Ancient Americas, and Oceania, returned in May 2025 in a reimagined Michael C. Rockefeller Wing. Following a multiyear renovation, the three major collections, spanning five continents and hundreds of cultures, now stand as independent entities.

Lucy Foster, Manager at D Lan Galleries New York, recently spoke to Dr. Maia Nuku, Evelyn A. J. Hall and John A. Friede Curator for Oceanic Art at the Met about the new Wing and its impact.

Read the full article via the link in bio.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Photography: Peter Zwolinski

15/08/2026

BARK MASTERS | FINAL WEEK

Bark Masters 2026 is now entering its final week at D Lan Galleries Sydney.

It has been a privilege to present this unique collection of masterworks by some of the most celebrated Australian artists practicing one of the world’s oldest continuing art forms.

If you’re in Sydney, be sure to visit us in the gallery before 21 August to view these remarkable works in person.

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BARK MASTERS | Until 21 August 2026
D Lan Galleries
97-99 Queen Street, Woollahra
Sydney / Gadigal Country NSW, 2025

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Installation Views: Stephen Oxenbury

14/08/2026

Timothy Cook | COMING SOON

D Lan Galleries is honoured to present Timothy Cook’s first solo exhibition in the United States, in collaboration with Jilamara Arts and Crafts Association. Presented at our Upper East Side gallery in New York, Kurluwukari - meaning ‘circle’ in Tiwi language - brings together a major new body of work across bark and linen.

Widely regarded as the modern master of Tiwi painting, Cook works exclusively with natural ochres and pigments drawn from the Country around his home community of Milikapiti on Melville Island. Ground and prepared by hand, the pigments are applied in bold, rich fields to linen and seasoned stringybark, harvested and prepared at Jilamara. As a result, Cook’s practice is inseparable from Country and remains rooted in the living landscape of the Tiwi Islands, its seasons and Tiwi identity.

We are delighted to announce the release of the exhibition catalogue on 27 August, offering a first look at this remarkable new body of work. We look forward to sharing more details shortly…

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Timothy Cook : Kurluwukari
10 September - 9 October
25 East 73rd Street
New York / Lenapehoking

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Photography:

12/08/2026

Private Sales | Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri

Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri is among the most acclaimed painters to emerge from the Papunya Tula movement, internationally recognised for compositions of extraordinary optical intensity. Untitled - Murrmu 2001 captures a pivotal moment in his practice, revealing the emergence of the distinctive pictorial language that would come to define his mature work.

Perhaps the painting’s most striking feature is the density of its surface: the near disappearance of negative space. Across the canvas, meticulously controlled fields of dotting are drawn into close, continuous relation, so the painting reads less as a sequence of discrete motifs and more as a single, unbroken visual field. This intensification of technique marks a decisive step in the artist’s development, and works from this formative period offer a rare view into the origins of the visual language that would establish him as one of the defining artists of his generation.

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To enquire about this artwork, we welcome you to contact [email protected]

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Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri | Untitled - Murrmu | 137 x 91 cm
©Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri / Copyright Agency 2026

08/08/2026

The Turning Season | FINAL DAYS

The Turning Season is now entering its final days at Pace’s 508 and 510 West 25th Street spaces. The exhibition surveys Emily Kam Kngwarray’s remarkable career, bringing together her most renowned series of paintings and textiles.

The presentation marks our second international collaboration with PACE gallery, and continues a shared commitment to advancing global recognition of Australian First Nations art.

If you’re in New York, be sure to visit PACE gallery before the exhibition closes on 14 August.

Pace Gallery

Address

40 Exhibition Street
Melbourne, VIC
3000

Opening Hours

Tuesday	10am - 5pm
Wednesday	10am - 5pm
Thursday	10am - 5pm
Friday	10am - 5pm

Telephone

+61390087212

Website

http://www.dlangalleries.com/

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