Adrian Jangala Robertson b. 1962

Adrian was born at Papunya in 1962. He went to school in Papunya and remembers Geoff Bardon as a school teacher and working alongside the early Western Desert painters. Adrian’s fathers’ country travels from west of Walungurru through Karku at Nyirrpi to Warlurkurlangu at Yuendumu. His father, Jampitjinpa, lived at Mount Doreen close to Yuendumu and later worked at Papunya as a Gardener and Builder. Jampitjinpa is a brother to the late Darby Ross Jampitjinpa, sharing the same mother and father. Adrian’s mother is the late Eunice Napangardi, a well known painter herself. It is her country, Yalpirakinu, that Adrian paints.

Adrian joined The Bindi Mwerre Anthurre Artists in 2002. He is a landscape painter and uses a predominantly restricted palette. His paintings consistently refer to the desert mountains, ridges and trees which are part of Yalpirakinu. His brushwork is loaded with energy, drama and memories. He is a deliberate and thoughtful painter; reworking, pushing and pulling the image to completion.

Since 2022, Adrian and his peers in the studio, Charles Inkamala and Billy Kenda, have been working in ceramics, attending weekly workshops during semester at Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education. Ceramic works by Adrian in ‘Clay Country’ toured Australia from 2022 – 2026. His work in this medium has been very well received when exhibited at Bindi Magic. In 2025 Araluen Arts Centre acquired one of his ceramic landscapes.

He won the NATSIAA General Painting Award (2020), the Artist of the Year, Mparntwe NAIDOC awards (2021), and The Alice Prize, Mparntwe National Contemporary Art Award (2022). In 2022 he was a finalist in the Hadley Art Prize and Sulman Prize. Adrian has been selected as an Archibald, Wynne and Sulman finalist in the same year twice.