Aboriginal & Pacific Art represents contemporary Aboriginal art from around Australia. Working with community-owned and -governed art centres, the gallery shows monthly exhibitions of new works, including painting, sculpture and works on paper, from established and emerging artists. Aboriginal & Pacific Art was established by Gabriella Roy in 1996 at the Sydney Dymock’s Building. She has worked with both Aboriginal and Pacific arts and artefacts for the past four decades and brings an acute sense of history and aesthetics to the gallery. At the Dymock’s space, Aboriginal & Pacific Art presented many groundbreaking shows, including solo exhibitions of the late Tiwi artists Kitty Kantilla (Kutuwulumi Purawarrumpatu) and Freda Warlapinni, and the late Fitzroy Crossing artist Janangoo Butcher Cherel. The gallery is also a long-standing representative of Tiwi artist Timothy Cook and South Australian Ngarrindjeri weaver Yvonne Koolmatrie.
Gabriella works together with the art advisors from community art centres to best represent the artists and their works. In 2005, the gallery moved to its current location in Waterloo’s 2 Danks Street, attracting a new and diverse audience. Here, Aboriginal & Pacific Art has presented the yearly Sydney exhibitions of Warakurna Artists, Tjala Arts and Tjungu Palya, all based in South Australia’s Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunyjatjara (APY) Lands, and solo exhibitions of Tiwi artists Jean Baptiste Apuatimi and Timothy Cook. Aboriginal & Pacific Art is a member of the Australia Commercial Galleries Association (ACGA) and Gabriella is an accredited government valuer (since 1986). The gallery also represents works in the secondary market. The ‘Pacific’ of its title refers to Gabriella’s extensive knowledge and secondary market representation of Oceanic arts.
