Nationally touring exhibition Tarnanthi on Tour: Too Deadly arrives
Published on 22 July 2026
Celebrating a decade of Tarnanthi
Rockhampton Museum of Art, in partnership with the Art Gallery of South Australia, will present groundbreaking works by leading contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists when Tarnanthi on Tour: Too Deadly arrives at Rockhampton Museum of Art from 25 July 2026. The exhibition brings together more than thirty works from past Tarnanthi Festivals, many never seen outside Adelaide, including monumental paintings, immersive installations and moving image works.
Following the major exhibition Too Deadly: Ten Years of Tarnanthi, presented at AGSA in 2025 to mark the tenth anniversary of Tarnanthi, this touring exhibition will include significant works featured in Tarnanthi Festivals from the past decade that reflect the creative diversity, innovation and cultural depth of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art. Too Deadly features landmark works of art by celebrated First Nations artists, from chronicles of Australian identity to works from the perspective of Aboriginal stock men and women during the pastoral frontier, to large-scale collaborative paintings that express enduring connections to Country.
Tarnanthi on Tour: Too Deadly will travel to six venues across four states, bringing the impact of Tarnanthi to audiences nationwide. The tour launches on 25 July 2026 at Rockhampton Museum of Art (QLD) before heading to Maitland Regional Art Gallery (NSW), Ngununggula (NSW), Caboolture Art Gallery (QLD), Geelong Gallery (VIC) and Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery (WA).
AGSA Director Jason Smith says, ‘For more than a decade, Adelaide and Tarnanthi have been a nexus for First Nations artists from across Australia. Now, AGSA will celebrate ten years of Tarnanthi by taking their stories on the road, connecting audiences around Australia with Tarnanthi’s nation-leading approach as a platform for conversations, deep listening and important cultural sharing.’
The Hon Kyam Maher MLC, Minister for Arts says, ‘Over the last ten years, the Tarnanthi Festival has become a mainstay of South Australia’s cultural calendar and an important celebration of First Nations creativity, community and cultural continuity. Tarnanthi on Tour: Too Deadly offers a unique chance for audiences outside of South Australia to experience Tarnanthi and engage with the scale, detail and deep histories of significant works drawn from the Festival’s first decade.’
Too Deadly features major installations and works of art by Tony Albert, Byron Brooks, Kunmanara Carroll, Sammy Dodd, Janet Fieldhouse, Nyaparu (William) Gardiner, Kunmanara (Fred) Grant, Manini Gumana, Simon Hogan, Wendy Hubert, Karen Mills, Sally M Nangala Mulda, Kunmanara (Peter) Mungkuri, Vincent Namatjira, Kumanjayi Paddy, Mavis Ngallametta, Alair Pambegan, Kunmanara (Lawrence) Pennington, Kunmanara Presley, Reko Rennie, Ian Rictor, Marlene Rubuntja, John Prince Siddon, Pauline Nangala Sunfly, Cornelia Tipuamantumirri, Kunmanara (Roy) Underwood, Lennard Walker, Garawan Waṉambi, Judy Watson, Bugai Whyoulter and Mumu Mike Williams.
The word tarnanthi (pronounced TAR-nan-dee) comes from the language of the Kaurna people, the traditional owners of the Adelaide Plains. It means to spring forth or appear – like the sun and the first emergence of light. Since 2015, Tarnanthi has established itself as a nation-leader in presenting the nuanced complexity and ingenuity of contemporary First Nations art. More than 2.2 million people have visited Tarnanthi exhibitions and events and more than 10,000 First Nations artists have presented their works of art, building understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and culture for audiences in Australia and around the world.
Highlights of Tarnanthi on Tour: Too Deadly include:
Reko Rennie, OA_RR
In OA_RR, Kamilaroi/Gamilaroi/Gamilaraay artist Reko Rennie uses three-channel digital video to explore his Aboriginal identity through a powerful act of symbolic return to Country. Driving a Rolls-Royce painted with his distinctive camouflage pattern layered with Kamilaroi diamond motifs, Rennie travels across Kamilaroi Country to land near where his grandmother was born. The work draws on family history, particularly the story of his grandmother Julia, who was forcibly removed from her family and enslaved on a pastoral station, while confronting the stark contrast between colonial wealth and the lived experiences of Aboriginal people.
Wendy Hubert, Nyun-nhuu-nha and Stockmen and the first plane over the Pilbara
Wendy Hubert is a highly respected Yindjibarndi artist, elder, cultural custodian and linguist who has lived and worked in Ieramagadu (Roebourne) and Ngurrawaana Yindjibarndi community for more than forty years. Through her paintings, she renders with raw emotion her memories of growing up on stations and missions across the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Her works encapsulate the grief of losing her mother at a young age and her loneliness and confusion after being taken away from family. Hubert’s father was a stockman, like many Aboriginal people in the Pilbara region, which allowed him to stay on and continue caring for Country. Through painting daily in the studio as well as on her homeland at Ngurrawaana, Hubert has found peace for herself as an artist, revisiting and reimagining the deep love she has for her family and her Ngurra (Country).
Judy Watson, string over water (alkurrji kingkarri wanami) and spine and teeth (mundirri banga mayi)
Waanyi artist Judy Watson’s works extend her ongoing pursuit of stolen histories and submerged cultural memory. Central to the works is the image of a kangaroo-tooth necklace, which Watson first encountered in 1997 at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, United Kingdom, an artefact displaced from Country and held in a colonial archive. In these works, the necklace appears ghosted against a dappled blue field, intersected by the silhouetted spine of a bunya pine branch. Elsewhere, a length of string handmade by Watson floats across undulating blue waters, asserting an unbroken tradition of making and knowledge, despite dislocation. Across both paintings, veiled forms slowly emerge, as Watson draws parallels between the processes of painting, archaeology and the recovery of memory embedded in place.
Tony Albert and Alair Pambegan, Frontier Wars Bone Fish Story Place
Girramay/Yidinji/Kuku/Yalanji artist Tony Albert and Wik-Mungkan artist Alair Pambegan’s work is a suspended sculpture of carved bullet-shaped bone fish depicting the collision of traditional Wik culture with the violence of colonisation in our recent past. The artists’ collaboration reinterprets a traditional story by merging the shape of timber bullets with the shapes of large bonefish into a powerful work that speaks loudly of the past and present.
John Prince Siddon, Australia: Mix it all up
Walmajarri artist John Prince Siddon presents a large-scale mixed media installation that collapses personal history, national narratives and Ngarrangkarni (ancestral creation stories) into a kaleidoscopic vision of contemporary Australian life. Siddon comes from a family originally from the Great Sandy Desert, with deep ties to cultural and artistic practice. Beginning his artistic career after a serious horse-riding accident ended his working life as a stockman, Siddon draws inspiration from both lived experience and ancestral knowledge. This monumental installation features paintings on canvas and kangaroo pelts, alongside a painted bullock skull, installed against wallpaper designed using elements of the artist’s own paintings. Referencing imagery absorbed through television as well as firsthand experience, the work assembles an ever-evolving, densely layered perspective on our current state of affairs, merging cultural continuity with the complexities of modern life.
Tarnanthi on Tour: Too Deadly builds on the success of other Tarnanthi touring presentations, including the international tour of Kuḻaṯa Tjuṯa (Many Spears), the regional South Australian and Moroccan tour of Naomi Hobson’s Adolescent Wonderland, and nationally touring exhibitions John Mawurndjul: I am the old and the new, Kungka Kuṉpu (Strong Women), Saltbush Country and Vincent Namatjira: Australia in Colour.
For further information about Tarnanthi on Tour: Too Deadly, visit agsa.sa.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/tarnanthi-on-tour-too-deadly.
Schedule of Programs and Events
Visit: https://www.rmoa.com.au/Whats-On for more information
Exhibition Dates
25 July – 5 October 2026
Friday 24 July
12:30pm: Artist Talk with Judy Watson and Dr Melinda Mann
6.00pm: Official Launch with Welcome to Country, Darumbal Dancers, music performance by Jada Weazel
Saturday 25 July
9:00am: Too Deadly: Ten Years of Tarnanthi exhibitions opens
10:00am: Panel Talk including Tansy Curtin, Assistant Director, Artistic Programs Art Gallery of South Australia; exhibiting artists Janet Fieldhouse and Judy Watson; and RMOA First Nations Reference Group Member, Dr Melinda Mann, and Chair, Nathan Mudyi Sentance.
Saturday 25 and Sunday 26 July
9:30am – 12:30pm: Free Kids Activities (self-guided)
Tarnanthi is presented by the Art Gallery of South Australia with principal partner BHP and support from the Government of South Australia. Too Deadly: Ten Years of Tarnanthi touring exhibition has been assisted by the Australian Government's Visions of Australia program.
Image Caption: Vincent Namatjira, Western Aranda people, Northern Territory, born Mparntwe (Alice Springs), Northern Territory 1983, Albert Namatjira, Slim Dusty and Archie Roach on Country, 2022, Indulkana, Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands, South Australia, synthetic polymer paint on linen, 167.0 x 198.0 cm; Prudence Lee Bequest Fund 2023, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, © Vincent Namatjira/Copyright Agency.