In recent decades a deeper understanding of the position of art in Aboriginal culture has been available to outsiders. There is a close relationship between Indigenous art and the landscape of Australia, a connection which can be simultaneously spiritual, political, informative, and beautiful.

In traditional Aboriginal art the physical traces and adventures of the ancestor creator beings who, in the Dreamtime, made the land and its laws, are celebrated in song, dance and ceremony, in body ornament and in painting and drawing, on sand, bark and rock faces, as well as in fibre arts and sculpture. The performances themselves ensure custodianship of the land and the continuance of law.

Many, if not all, of these arts continue today. They are an indication of a personal and political identification with the land and its continuing traditions and evolving cultural forms. Aboriginal artists have extended their artmaking to include painting and other non-indigenous art forms, which has given them increasing exposure to greater audiences; through exhibitions and publications, and through the marketplace itself, the artists have engaged with non-Aboriginal people.

The Western Desert Painting Movement came alive in the Papunya government settlement in the Northern Territory in the years 1971-1973, under the inspired tutorship and encouragement of Geoffrey Bardon. Out of the most severely degraded conditions grew an artistic and cultural movement of immense power and importance for its own people and for Australia itself.

The multi-layered, less linear experience of time and place that characterises the Dreaming underpins the paintings of the Aboriginal artists represented by Waterhole Art. Within this conjunction of space, time and tradition the work constantly surprises, by the artists' unexpected and original interpretations of their Dreamings.