SYDNEY.- Art Leven will open its new Woolloomooloo gallery this Thursday 26 March with two inaugural exhibitions: The Places That Know Us, a major solo presentation of paintings by Mitjili Napanangka Gibson, and Gatherings, a group exhibition of aluminium and bronze sculptures created in collaboration with Urban Art Projects (UAP), presented in the gallery’s dedicated sculpture courtyard. The program will also include a screening of the short film Nana (2007), written and directed by Warwick Thornton, which offers an intimate glimpse into the life and story of Mitjili Napanangka Gibson.

The opening marks the relocation of the Gallery (formerly Cooee Art) from Redfern and signals a new chapter for one of Australia’s longest-running fine art galleries dedicated to First Nations artists.

Established in 1981, Art Leven has evolved over four decades through close collaboration with the artists and communities it represents. While its name, location, and scale have changed, the gallery’s mission has remained constant: to champion artists with integrity and present First Nations art in a thoughtful and informed context. The move to Woolloomooloo reflects a deepening of that commitment. The new multi-level gallery has been purpose-built to support focused exhibitions and foster closer engagement with artists’ practices.

The debut exhibition at Art Leven’s new Woolloomooloo gallery features Mitjili Napangka Gibson, one of the last Pintupi people to walk out of the Western Desert. Born into a pre-contact nomadic life, the knowledge that informs Napanangka’s paintings is shaped not by formal training but by lived experience - travelling between water sites, gathering bush foods, observing women’s law, and carrying responsibility for Country long before she ever encountered canvas.

Mirri Leven, Director of Art Leven, said: “Art Leven is delighted to open this new space and celebrate First Nations art and culture in a new context. It felt important to mark this milestone and begin with an artist whose work carries such authority and connection to Country.

Mitjili’s paintings hold places that have been walked and cared for over generations.”

Although she began painting later in life, Mitjili Napangka Gibson’s authority as an artist was immediate and assured. Her works hold sites for which she carries cultural responsibility, expressed through rhythm, structure and repetition rather than narrative description.

The paintings in The Places That Know Us map significant locations across her Country, including Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay), Winparrku and Mina Mina. Colour registers rainfall moving across salt lakes, sandhills shifting under wind, and the presence of ancestral force embedded in the land itself. Pattern carries movement, and Country is understood as something active and ongoing.

Presented alongside this exhibition is Gatherings, a group presentation of sculptural works produced through a collaboration between First Nations artists from remote communities and the foundry Urban Art Projects (UAP). First Nations artists participating in Gatherings include Craig Koomeeta, Lena Yarinkura, Jubilee Wolmby, Gary Namponan, Carol Campion, Phillip Sandy, Gershom Garlngarr and Thomas Toikalkin. Created through a series of workshops in the early 2000s, the sculptures represent a moment when established carving traditions were translated into the enduring mediums of cast aluminium and bronze. For many of the artists involved - whose practices centred on wood carving and ceremonial objects - the foundry process introduced new possibilities in form and material. Several of the sculptures depict animals familiar within the landscapes of northern Australia, including camp dogs, birds and crocodiles. These figures move between daily life, story and ancestral knowledge. Seen together, the works in Gatherings reveal a meeting of knowledge systems, technical processes and cultural continuity. Long-held sculptural traditions are carried forward through new materials while remaining grounded in Country.