Over the weekend, I visited Yolŋu Power: The Art of Yirrkala, curated by Cara Pinchbeck, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. I brought my three-and-a-half-year-old daughter with me, and as you can probably imagine, the experience was anything but conventional.
I’ve spent years moving slowly through exhibitions, reading every wall text, absorbing each work in sequence. But this time, with a toddler in tow, the experience became a little chaotic.
It was fast.
It was unpredictable.
It was completely out of order.
Like watching a film with its scenes shuffled, beginning at the end, skipping to the middle, circling back to the start, and trying to make sense of it all.
Yet that nonlinear path revealed something unexpected. It sparked new connections, moments of contrast and overlap I may never have noticed had I followed the intended route. I probably read only a quarter of the wall text, but I was seeing in other ways.
In the middle room, the minty green walls and salon hang gave the works on paper a certain lift, injecting a bright, youthful energy into the exhibition’s centre. The boldness of those marks found quiet counterbalance in the careful details of Djirrirra Wunuŋmurra’s nearby larrakitj (hollow poles) Buyku (2008), where I had a brief moment to pause with a little sleepy head on my shoulder.
New Connections in a Nonlinear Journey
Later, we drifted past the dimly lit, concave gallery, hushed and reverent, its solemnity heightened, I think, by our reverse chronology. I could feel both law and lore held in that space. The repetition of ancestral symbols, miny’tji, anchored the works across material, time, and generation.
The work that held my daughter’s attention the longest was the video installation Rarrirarri (2023), by The Mulka Project and Mulkun Wirrpanda. We sat in the dark and watched it loop four times. Flowers bloomed. Insects flew. Ants emerged to nibble leaves back to stems.
“Here come the butterflies,” she’d say.
“The ants are back.”
And then, on the third loop, she stood up and walked into the projection. She sat within it, becoming part of the work.
Until that moment, no one had interacted with the piece. But after she stepped into it, others followed. Something about her instinctive participation seemed to give permission. The room shifted. Still bodies leaned forward. Viewers engaged physically with the work. What had been a quiet, observational space became something communal. Strangers smiled as little ones tried to catch projected butterflies.
Moments of Stillness
Another moment of quiet came with Nawurapu Wunuŋmurra’s Mokuy Spirits (2015). Curated in an inward-facing semicircle, they wrapped around you, gathered, watching. My daughter was drawn in. She stood among them, slowly turning, as if listening. They looked down at her, and she up at them. The space invited stillness, no small feat for a toddler, and for a moment, time slowed.
In the end, we spent about 28 minutes in the exhibition. Far less than I would have on my own. But I picked up the catalogue on our way out, knowing I’d return again for hopefully a slightly longer gallery stomp.
Lessons in Looking
Introducing children to art and different contexts has always felt important to me. I’ve taken her to galleries since she was two months old, but this was our first major exhibition together since she became her own little person, curious, vocal, fast-moving.
It came with challenges, yes. But I also think she took more from it than I expected. In the end, she wasn’t just along for the ride. She changed the way I experienced the work, less linear and more instinctive. A good lesson.
Yolŋu Power: The Art of Yirrkala is a phenomenal exhibition. It runs at the Art Gallery of New South Wales until 6 October 2025.
Article by Brooke Ellen Louttit