Australia has a thriving contemporary art scene, populated by artists who engage with the history and culture of their country as well as the increasingly multicultural international community. Fiona Hall is one of the country’s most heralded artists—she has participated in Documenta and represented Australia in the 2015 Venice Biennale. Hall often incorporates organic materials like seed pods and bones in her work, as a way of contending with contemporary modes of consumption and destruction. Like Hall, Australian artist Simryn Gill works in multiple media, including photography, sculpture, and writing. Through works that incorporate mundane objects she has collected, or placid photographs of wide open spaces, the artist reflects on subjects both personal and historical.

Although the aboriginal Martu People, who oversee the care of a vast swath of land in Western Australia, have been making art for thousands of years, they only recently began to make works on canvas. Communities now come together to make collaborative paintings. These gatherings result in physical artworks, but also function as social occasions for older members to pass down traditions to the younger generations. Martu artists have used their work as a mode of protest against exploratory mining of their land, and other invasions on their way of life.