Hermannsburg Pottery

Fri 10 Oct 2025

In the sweeping plains and red-hued rolling ranges of the Central Desert lies Ntaria (Hermannsburg), a former Lutheran mission about 130 kilometres west of Mparntwe (Alice Springs) and home to a dynamic, world‑acclaimed pottery movement.

In the early ‘Mission Days’, Ntaria children were instructed in a variety of crafts, including modelling animals and figures from plasticine in the 1930s. By the 1970s, Barossa Valley-born gardener Victor Jaensch (1911–78) assisted in expanding this practice. With the help of Aranda leaders Nahasson Ungwanaka and Joseph Rontji, Jaensch sourced local clay and taught the local men to produce small sculpted figures for the tourist market.^[1] Ungwanaka, as Pastor of the now independent Aboriginal community^[2], remembered his clay building experiences fondly and, in 1990, lobbied for formal ceramics training for outstation families. Teacher-potter Naomi Sharp was soon appointed, and what began as a training program has since become an internationally renowned art movement, sustained by a dedicated group of women artists^[3].

Irene Mbitjana Entata

Established in 1992 by Western Aranda community leaders as an economic venture, the Hermannsburg Pottery pioneered a distinctive style of hand-coiled clay vessels, often adorned with figurative, sculptural lids. The master ceramicists behind these works see art as an avenue for self-expression in representing their culture, Country, history and lived experiences in Ntaria and its surrounding outstations.

The hand-glazed panoramic landscapes depicted on the pots continue the legacy of legendary Arrernte watercolourist Albert Namatjira (1902–59). He expressed his deep connection to his Country in an adopted European pictorial style, embodying the sacredness of Tjoritja Country (the West MacDonnell Ranges) and altyerr (creation stories) within each painting. His success inspired his family and contemporaries to take up painting, going on to establish the enduring art movement of the Hermannsburg School of watercolour painting. The Hermannsburg Potters, historically mostly women artists, can trace their ancestry to Namatjira or to one of the other four family painting groups who were early practitioners of the Hermannsburg School style — Ebatarinja, Pareroultja and Raberaba — and continue to expand the tradition into three-dimensional sculptural forms.

Watch | Tony Albert documents Hermannsburg stories

The Hermannsburg Potters Project is a joint collaboration between QAGOMA and First Nations artist Tony Albert. A close friend of the potters, Tony was commissioned to lead the project which aimed to document the stories of the creators, explore their artistic practices, and capture — from their descendants and family members — the knowledge and insights acquired through their long history and importance to the arts in this country.

Judith Pungkarta Inkamala

Rahel Ungwanaka

Irene Mbitjana Entata

Clara Inkamala

Sgraffito is a recent addition to the repertoire of the Hermannsburg Potters and has been adapted to much success. Incisions into the white slip contrast against the terracotta base to create a strong visual effect through which the artists convey their story. Clara Inkamala shows the old Ntaria (Hermannsburg) garage, where her uncle worked, the scene is completed by the white stone-built buildings and date palms which make up the old mission headquarters, now known as the Hermannsburg Historical Precinct.

ingkwia tjaiya, lyaartinya tjaiya (old way, new way): 30 Years of Hermannsburg Pottery in the Collection
31 May – 9 November 2025
Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA)
Brisbane, Australia
Free entry

Sophia Nampitjimpa Sambono (Jingili people) is Associate Curator, Indigenous Australian Art, QAGOMA
This text is adapted from an essay first published in QAGOMA’s Members’ magazine, Artlines

The Gallery gratefully acknowledges the hundreds of donors who generously supported the QAGOMA Foundation’s ‘Unlock the Collection’ campaign to digitise the Collection and make artworks more discoverable. The Hermannsburg Potters research project was made possible from funds from campaign donations.

Endnotes

1. ^ See Jennifer Isaacs, Hermannsburg Potters: Aranda Artists of Central Australia, Draftsman House, Sydney, 2000, p.50
2. ^ The mission was formally transferred to Aranda community ownership and governance in 1982 under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976
3. ^ Drawn from the Hermannsburg Potters Aboriginal Corporation pamphlet Ntaria: Our Country, Our People, undated