Lydia Balbal and Venetta Yanawana // Old People Lived Here

Presented with Broome’s Short St Gallery, this exhibition features Lydia Balbal and Venetta Yanawana – two artists whose practices honour ancestral knowledge and personal memory.

Lydia Balbal’s paintings are a powerful expression of her Mangala heritage and her deep connection to the Great Sandy Desert, where she was born, before moving with her family to Bidyadanga. Her paintings often explore jila (living water), rockholes and the subterranean networks of water and memory that sustain both Country and cultural knowledge. Lydia’s practice transforms traditional terrain into vibrant, abstracted fields of colour that map ancestral songlines alongside lived experience. Collectors are drawn to the freedom and emotional depth of her mark-making, which offers a new way of seeing what she knows.

Venetta Yanawana’s work reflects her strong cultural connection to Nyangumarta Warran and the northern Australian landscapes that stretch from red desert sands to salty coastal plains. A Mangala woman from the Kimberley region, her vivid compositions trace the journeys of her people and the sacred sites they continue to honour, capturing memory and Country in layered, rhythmic forms. She explains, ‘I paint my country Nyangumarta Warran, old people used to live there. I am inspired by old people from the past and the colours of the landscape. I see more now and I can show people what I see with each painting.’ Through colour and mark-making, she evokes both personal experience and ancestral presence, emerging as a compelling new voice in contemporary Aboriginal art.

Together, Lydia and Venetta share a profound cultural connection to Mangala Country and ancestry. Their works depict the lands their community has traversed and cared for over millennia, honouring both the country itself and the people who lived there.