Motorbike Paddy, Emily Kam Kngwarray and the Wonders of Utopia

For thirty-seven years, the Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery has been a leading champion of Aboriginal art in the UK. In 1996, the gallery gave Emily Kam Kngwarray her first solo exhibition outside Australia — at a time when few in the British art establishment recognised the significance of Aboriginal art.

Now, nearly three decades later, Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery continues to offer an encompassing context for understanding Aboriginal art and presents Motorbike Paddy, Emily Kam Kngwarray and the Wonders of Utopia — a resonant collection of works by artists from the Utopia region of Australia’s Central Desert. It is a celebration of the living, evolving artistic community — a culture of collaborative creativity deeply rooted in land, spirituality, and kinship. Presented as part of the gallery’s Songlines Season XXXVII, the exhibition reflects Rebecca Hossack’s commitment to championing Aboriginal art on an international stage.

The works on view include previously unseen paintings created over the last thirty years by a remarkable group of artists who continue to shape the Utopia story. Among them is Motorbike Paddy, the most senior practising Law Man among the Utopia artists since Emily Kam Kngwarray, who brings deep authority of lived tradition to the exhibition. His dynamic, expressive canvases channel movement and ancestral narratives into contemporary form, demonstrating the energy and innovation alive within the tradition. Judy Greeny, the great-niece of Emily Kam Kngwarray, contributes luminous, intricately layered works that affirm her growing international reputation. Also included in the exhibition are works by Gloria Petyarre, renowned for her rhythmic depictions of bush medicine leaves; Gladdy Kemarre, whose paintings draw on deep cultural knowledge and connection to Country; and Ada Bird Petyarre, a pioneering figure of the Utopia art movement. Alongside them are Angelina Ngal Pwerle and Charmaine Pwerle, whose vibrant, intergenerational perspectives continue the dynamic legacy of Central Desert painting.

The Utopia community, located northeast of Alice Springs, transformed from a cattle station into one of Australia’s most artistically vital regions after being returned to Aboriginal ownership in the 1970s. Art here is more than an individual pursuit — it is an expression of cultural continuity and shared knowledge, passed between generations. In Utopia, the idea of the artist as a lone genius is replaced by a network of creative relationships.

This exhibition places Aboriginal art at the centre of the contemporary conversation — not as a historical footnote or a singular phenomenon, but as a dynamic, enduring practice that continues to evolve and inspire. By honouring the past and celebrating the present, Motorbike Paddy, Emily Kam Kngwarray and the Wonders of Utopia affirms that these stories — and this art — are still being told.