Lydia Balbal and Venetta Yanawana // Old People Lived Here

Presented with Broome's Short Street Gallery, Old People Lived Here features Lydia Balbal and Venetta Yanawana – two artists whose practices honour ancestral knowledge and personal memory.

Lydia Balbal’s artwork is a powerful and redolent expression of her Mangala heritage and deep connection to the land of the Great Sandy Desert - where she was born near Punmu and later moved with her family to Bidyadanga. Balbal’s works often explore jila (living water), rockholes, and the subterranean networks of water and memory that sustain both Country and cultural knowledge, bringing to life landscapes that are in her own words, “upside down: water, rockholes, lines beneath the sand-dunes.” Her art practice recomposes traditional terrain into vibrant, abstracted fields of colour that simultaneously map ancestral songlines and lived experience. Accordingly, collectors and enthusiasts respond to Balbal’s unconstrained painting that translates what she knows in a new way and that allows her expressive marks to convey vast emotional and cultural depth.

Venetta Yanawana’s artwork reflects her deep cultural connection to the desert country Nyangumarta Warran and the northern Australian landscapes that stretch from the red desert sands to the salty plains by the sea. As a Mangala woman from the Kimberley region, her vibrant paintings often map the journey of her people and the sacred sites they continue to honour, capturing both memory and Country in layered compositions that resonate with movement and history. Yanawana describes her art practice directly, "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." Venetta uses mark-making and colour to evoke both personal experience and ancestral presence, positioning her as an exciting emerging voice in contemporary Aboriginal art.

Together Venetta and Lydia share a deep cultural connection to Mangala country and ancestry, both depict the lands that their community have traversed and lived for millennia, with their artwork serving to honour and remember the lands and the people that lived there.