The Mimili Maku Wati Group is a collective of Aṉangu men from Mimili Community on the APY Lands who are redefining what contemporary printmaking can look like – not in formal studios, but out bush, on Country, with whatever tools are at hand. Formed around fire and kinship, the group’s collaborative practice centres on innovation, cultural continuity, and shared leadership.

Mentored by senior artist Robert Fielding, the group includes Desmond Woodforde, Shane Dodd, Richard Nelson, and Arnold Dodd. Together, they have developed the now-signature troopie press – a vehicle-powered printmaking technique where carved boards are pressed beneath the wheels of a Toyota –alongside other experimental, bush-based methods that subvert and expand the boundaries of print. This radical, resourceful approach speaks powerfully to the group’s broader commitment; to cultural strength, collective healing, advocacy, and ngapartji-ngapartji (reciprocal learning).

"If a connoisseur of printmaking walked into this exhibition they might be disappointed with the apparent roughness of the printed images presented here. If this were to be the case, they would certainly be missing the point, and the power, that imbues these artworks.

There are no printmaking presses in Mimili. Similarly, there are no copper or zinc plates to make etchings, no finely grained cherry wood blocks to make ukiyo-e prints or imagesetter films for making stencils for screen printing. And for that matter, no table saws or guillotines for cutting blocks or paper. Instead, the Mimili Wati glean their materials from what they can find on Country. Sometimes it is the detritus of community life like car parts from the tip or leftover pieces of cardboard or MDF. Other times it involves repurposing useful materials from other aspects of life for the purpose of artmaking. For example, witness the stencils and paintings on fuel caps and car bonnets by Shane Dodd, the screenprints Desmond Woodforde has drawn with a high-pressure hose directly onto pre-coated screens, and the confidence with which Mark Doolan wields an angle grinder to cut MDF to size.

As a result of the interface between artist and Country, Country finds its way into the Mimili Wati printmaking. I see it in the textures of the road that come up in Arnold Dodd, Richard Nelson and Shane Dodd’s woodblock prints here. It is like a double-image: what the artists have carved into the blocks, and what is imposed by Country by making the works in community. It is the red sand evident in any photograph of Mimili you might have seen that Shane Dodd confidently sandblasts with. The connoisseur might question why this form of recognition is important? To do so is to recognise that the artworks presented in this exhibition are multivalent: they are records of each artists’ engagement with materials on Country and a process of attending to cultural maintenance through the sharing of stories and images."

By Trent Walter, artist, printer and publisher at Negative Press, and lecturer in visual arts at La Trobe University.