MELBOURNE.- Tolarno Galleries announced representation of Tennant Creek Brio, a cross-cultural artist collective living and working on Warumungu Country in the Northern Territory of Australia. Once a station for the Overland Telegraph Line, later the site of extensive gold mines, Tennant Creek is today the home of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Presently, the collective work between studios in Melbourne and Tennant Creek.

Living in and around Tennant Creek, Brio came together as a group in 2016. Its current members include Fabian Brown Japaljarri, Lindsay Nelson Jakamarra, Rupert Betheras, Joseph Williams Jungarayi, Clifford Thompson Japaljarri, Jimmy Frank Jupurrula, Simon Wilson, Fabian Rankine Jampijinpa, Marcus Camphoo Kemarre, and recent collaborators including Eleanor Dixon Jawurlngali, Lévi McLean, Gary Sullibhaine, Jonathan Leahey, Arthur Dixon Jalyirri.

There is no straight story about the Tennant Creek Brio … I situate the art of the Brio amidst reprise, in the story of Indigenous art, kinship, Country, and decolonial praxis. This is a poetics of thwarted legibility and monstrous energy, excess that evades capture, ready concepts or scripted explanation. The story sends us somewhere else, reaching for something that came before or after, looking for what’s outback, round the back of the house, the shed, the art centre, the ‘outback.’ -- Tristen Harwood 2024

Known for their punk attitude and use of salvaged materials from the region’s historical mining boom, their work explores the confluences and conflicts between industrialisation and traditional ways of life.

While Brio is not directly an Arte Povera movement, their use of found objects – old mining maps, TVs and poker machines – aligns with the principles of the Arte Povera movement, which emphasised transforming everyday, often discarded, elements into art.

Their work is characterised by a raw, experimental and transformative energy. Brio's storytelling is multi-lingual and visually multi-layered – a unique fusion of ‘old practices and new collective imaginings.’

Tennant Creek Brio came to prominence in NIRIN, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, directed by Brook Andrew, in 2020.

In 2024, the first major survey of their work was held at the Australian Centre of Contemporary Art (ACCA).

Tennant Creek Brio’s first exhibition at Tolarno Galleries will open in February 2026. The same month, the major sculpture Rumpofsteelskin is anticipated to be a highlight of the Melbourne Art Fair.