Award-winning artists including Richard Bell, Maree Clarke and Emily Kam Kngwarray will lead the largest-ever exhibition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art presented internationally, to open in the United States next year.

The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art is curated by the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), and features more than 200 works from the gallery’s collection by more than 130 artists from across Australia, including the Tiwi Islands, Arnhem Land, the Torres Strait and the Kimberley.

“We see this show as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for people to discover and fall in love with Indigenous art from Australia,” says Myles Russell-Cook, NGV’s senior curator of Australian and First Nations art.

He wants The Stars We Do Not See to showcase the breadth and diversity of Indigenous art practice — from dot paintings, ochre bark paintings, cultural objects and weaving, to new media works, including video, sound installations and art made from unique materials.

Other artists featured in the exhibition include Brook Andrew, Ricky Maynard, Lorraine Connelly-Northey, Christian Thompson and the late Destiny Deacon.

The exhibition will also chronicle key moments in the history of Indigenous art, including the establishment of Papunya Tula Artists — Australia’s first Aboriginal arts company, where artists from the Western Desert painted on scraps of composition board — and the bark paintings of artists like Gulumbu Yunupiŋu, otherwise known as “Star Lady”, for whom the exhibition is named.

“It was trying to get that sweet spot of telling many different stories, but then also actively choosing works that will speak to a kind of transcultural relationship with a North American audience,” says Russell-Cook.

The exhibition will arrive at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC in October 2025, before travelling through to the end of 2027 to galleries across the US (including Denver, Portland and Salem), then to Toronto, Canada, before finishing up in Melbourne, at NGV.

The need for consultation

Russell-Cook and NGV developed the exhibition with Elders, including the gallery’s Elder-in-Residence Aunty Joy Murphy Wandin, and its First Nations Art and Design Strategic Council.

“We’ve done everything we possibly can to make sure that this show is utterly respectful in its intention to be an ambassador for over 250 different language groups and 65,000 years worth of history.”

He sees curating the exhibition as a privilege — one worth the challenge of trying to represent the oldest living culture on the world stage, through only 200-or-so works of art.

“There’s been a long history of institutions all around the world putting working with Indigenous communities in the too-hard basket, because there’s going to be consultation, and ‘we’re going to have to give up power’, and ‘what if something goes wrong?'” Russell-Cook says.

“Community consultation isn’t giving up power, it’s getting more power because you’re getting more voices in and you’re getting a stronger project.”

Works to watch out for

There are so many works that Russell-Cook can’t wait to see in North America for the first time.

He is thrilled about the inclusion of Spirit Dreaming through Napperby Country by Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri and Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri; as well as Gäna (Self) by Nyapanyapa Yunupiŋu.

The largest painting Kngwarray ever produced, Anwerlarr Anganenty (Big Yam Dreaming), will also travel to North America for the first time. Measuring 3×9 metres, it was painted over two days when she was 85 years old, in the year before she died.

Russell-Cook also points to two collaborative works: one 5m-wide painting by a group of Kaiadilt artists depicts Bentinck Island, where Kaiadilt people lived until the early 40s; and another 7m-wide painting of the salt lake Ngayartu Kujarra, or Lake Dora by a group of 12 women from Martumili, Western Australia.

“Just physically, these are huge, beautiful objects and I think people will be quite blown away,” says Russell-Cook.

NGV director Tony Ellwood is most excited about American audiences having the chance to see Mun-dirra, a 100m-long woven fish fence, commissioned for last year’s NGV Triennial.

“It’s weaving on this magnificent scale and done by a group of women that dedicated two years of their life to make it,” he says.

“It’s also doing something that [American audiences] will have never seen before, and talks about the importance of fibre art in some of our regions.”

Both Ellwood and Russell-Cook highlight works in the exhibition that challenge the idea that Indigenous art looks a certain way. Russell-Cook points to The Truth Hurts by Richard Bell, which reads “White Lies Matter”, a reference to the killing of George Floyd.

“I’m sure American audiences probably have no idea that there were people in Australia campaigning, following on from that momentum, calling for accountability of Aboriginal deaths in custody,” says Russell-Cook.

A moment for First Nations art internationally

The Stars We Do Not See is the latest major exhibition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art to travel overseas. Ever Present: First Peoples Art of Australia landed in Singapore in 2022 and New Zealand in 2023 (it’s on now at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra), while Maḏayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Painting from Yirrkala has been touring the US since 2022.

It also follows First Nations artists winning prestigious international awards in recent years, including Archie Moore winning the top prize at this year’s Venice Biennale, and art collective proppaNOW, which includes Bell, winning the 2022-24 Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice, worth $US25,000 ($37,000).

Ellwood says global dealers and art fairs are also now paying more attention to Indigenous artists and their work, and that NGV’s exhibition offers artists exposure to a new market.

“I don’t think [First Nations art has] ever really had the full presence that it’s deserved and that this show will achieve.”

Russell-Cook reckons Indigenous art is one of the things people overseas know about Australia. Even comedian and actor Steve Martin is a fan, having recently gifted the NGV Ronnie Tjampitjinpa’s painting Papa Dingo — near Kiwirrkurra, which is part of the exhibition.

“Indigenous art is absolutely something that the global audience recognises, they love, it’s collected by people around the world, shown around the world,” Russell-Cook says.

“It’s a soft entry for complex conversations about politics, about connection to place, about time, about Ancestors, about identity. But it’s also an absolutely daring and audacious art movement that has captured the world by storm because it’s deeply beautiful and unique.”