Virtual exhibition connects community to Canberra
- Self-directed virtual exhibition of the Wangka Wakaṉutja: The Story of the Papunya Literature Production Centre exhibition is online now
- Bridges the geographical gap between communities in regional and remote areas of Australia and the National Library of Australia in Canberra
- Access the virtual exhibition for free anytime by visiting the Library’s website
A screenshot from the virtual walkthrough of Wangka Wakanutja: The Story of the Papunya Literature Production Centre.
A screenshot from the virtual walkthrough of Wangka Wakanutja: The Story of the Papunya Literature Production Centre.
The National Library of Australia’s major exhibition, Wangka Wakaṉutja: The Story of the Papunya Literature Production Centre, is now available for online visitors to virtually discover.
The self-directed virtual exhibition bridges the geographical gap between communities in regional and remote areas of Australia and the National Library in Canberra, ensuring the national collection and material loaned to help tell our shared history is accessible to all Australians.
Papunya is a remote Aboriginal community in the Western Desert region of the Northern Territory, and the birthplace of the internationally known Western Desert art movement. Between 1979 and 1990, the Papunya Literature Production Centre produced hundreds of Pintupi-Luritja bilingual books guided by the community’s Elders, among them pioneers of the Western Desert Art movement.
The illustrated books were produced as literacy tools for local schoolchildren and tell stories of first contact, Dreamings, community life, plants, animals and more. Some are wildly creative and many are full of humour. Others are moving, dramatic and extraordinary. Together, they form a living record of an Indigenous language, safeguarding the knowledge and stories contained within them for future generations.
The exhibition opened in Canberra in April, but can now be accessed online, anytime. It features stories, drawings, photographs, manuscripts, ephemera and oral histories from the collections of the Papunya community, Papunya School, National Library of Australia, Australian National University, and other private collections, building on a recent exhibition shown in Darwin.
A book of the same name, Wangka Wakaṉutja: The Story of the Papunya Literature Production Centre, written by Vivien Johnson, Charlotte Phillipus and Samantha Disbray is also now available.
It tells the complete story of the beginning of the literacy movement in Papunya through the development and prolific work of the Papunya Literature Production Centre, and the eventual end of the program that saw much of the material packed away. The book also includes interviews, art and stories by the authors and artists who worked at the Literature Production Centre and features fully illustrated recreations of several readers in Pintupi-Luritja language. The recreations are printed on different paper stock to provide a genuine tactile experience for the reader.
Thanks to the generosity of an anonymous Library Patron and in consultation with the community, over 350 publications from the Library’s collections were digitised and are now freely available online via Trove.
Wangka Wakaṉutja: The Story of the Papunya Literature Production Centre is available in bookstores now.
The exhibition has been extended and can be seen in person at the National Library of Australia in Canberra until Sunday 31 January 2027. The Library’s exhibition galleries are open daily, 9am to 5pm. Entry to the exhibition is free, no bookings required.
Virtual exhibitions for other major exhibitions from the Library are also available online, starting with the 2022 exhibition On Stage: Spotlight on Our Performing Arts.
Attributable quotes
Old stories and new stories. For people (Aṉangu) to gather stories, put them on tapes, we would translate them, all those old stories. Scary stories, hunting stories, stories about everything, we were collecting them, translating and recording them together alongside pictures. There were lots of us working at the literacy program, ladies and men some drawing and some collecting stories.
“Wangka Wakaṉutja”, meaning “the story has been told” in Pintupi-Luritja, is a powerful reflection of the ongoing partnership at the heart of this project. Through close engagement with the Papunya community, we’ve been honoured to support the telling of First Nations stories, celebrating the rich cultural heritage, history and artistic legacy of Papunya for audiences nationally and internationally.
Professor Vivien Johnson, lead author of the book, exhibition advisor and sociologist, was awarded a National Library of Australia Literary Fellowship in 2019. Her catalogue of the 250 Papunya readers in the Library’s collection provided valuable content for the book and exhibition.
That morning in late 2009 when the darkroom door was opened, I happened to be in the surrounding classroom that was once the beating heart of the Papunya Literature Production Centre...I quickly realised that something marvellous had been stuffed away in those cardboard boxes piled high against the walls: Papunya’s stories in its own words and images. The extraordinary body of literature created by Papunya’s first literate generation is an achievement in its own way as revolutionary as their fathers’ transmutation of a traditional visual language into the medium of Art.
Alongside the story of Papunya, its books and their creators is the remarkable education and publishing movements set in motion by the 1970’s NT Bilingual Education program. It’s small publishing houses in schools produced books in dozens of Aboriginal languages. Wangka Wakaṉutja places the Papunya Literature Production Centre in this education, art and literary history.
Media kit
Explore the virtual exhibition
Images for media use available for download via Dropbox
Media enquiries
Georgia McDonald, Media Liaison, National Library of Australia
Phone: 0401 226 697
Email: media@nla.gov.au
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