Grandmothers

In Grandmothers, Aunty Shirley Yumala Collins honours the powerful and enduring role of grandmothers in Aboriginal cultures—knowledge holders, guides, protectors, and custodians of story and survival. Through paintings, prints, textiles, objects, artefacts and jewellery, Collins reflects on the deep cultural knowledge passed through generations by the matriarchs who bind families and communities together.

A grandmother herself, Collins draws on lived experience to explore custodianship, cultural memory, women’s work, and the significance of intergenerational storytelling. Her sculptural and mixed-media works—such as Grandmothers tools (2025), created from air-dried clay, sand, acrylic paints, sealant, wood, gauze, polymers, fabric, string, natural dyes and emu feathers—speak to resilience, resourcefulness and the spiritual inheritance carried forward by her generation.