PEARL AUSTIN
Antikirinya Matutjara Yankunytjara
b. 1963
Pearl Austin is an Indigenous artist, community leader, and educator of the Antikirinya Matutjara Yankunytjatjara people, and is an active member and the current Board Chair of Umoona Art Centre. With over 30 years experience as an educator at the Coober Pedy Area School, Pearl has supported generations of students and has worked tirelessly to strengthen Indigenous cultural knowledge within the education system and broader community.
Both Austin’s parents are of the Yankunytjatjara people, with her mother born in Amata and her father at Mount Eba Station. Austin’s art practice is grounded in her connection to Country and centres around recurring themes of water, land, her family lineage, and the two seasons that occur on Country – dry and wet. Describing her inspiration as the “beauty of the dry” and “colours of the wet”, the artist presents work that speaks to the powerful natural shifts that animate the desert landscape. Austin’s work is also motivated by and rooted in her commitment to passing on cultural knowledge, stories, and language to her 3 children and 6 grandchildren.
Austin has been included in numerous group exhibitions including Generation Next, 2025 at APY Gallery Adelaide as part of Tarnanthi Festival, New Beginnings, 2025 at Yaama Ganu, Moree, and Opal Fields, 2024 at APY Gallery Sydney. She was a finalist in the 2026 Darebin Art Prize and the 2024 Malka Aboriginal Art Prize. In 2025, Pearl was commissioned for a collaborative Country Road x Ngali Womenswear Collection that was available in stores nationwide. In 2026, Austin presented her debut solo exhibition Mabel Creek: The Resilience of Being at 8 Wall Gallery, Paddington.
^Updated April 2026