Merrepen Arts

Our problem

We're in deep *mud*. The contents of one entire building on ground level, including our fabric printing workshop, has been destroyed by a major flood in March 2026. Although the community is closed - initial assessors first visited it on 1st April - they didn't even get to our art centre but inspected houses and other offices. The devastation is bad. So bad they don't want to show the evacuated community members any photos of their homes yet. 

Merrepen Arts is a small community owned Aboriginal art centre in remote Northern Territory Top End. We are a social enterprise that is also a registered charity - any income we generate through our arts, crafts and fabric sales goes back into the community. 

 This wet season we've been flooded twice. The entire community was evacuated to Darwin both times and at time of writing is still there. The first time the water didn't reach our art centre BUT the second time - in mid March - our fabric printing workshop and sewing rooms were completely inundated with record levels of floodwater and silt, more than 170 cm. This is 10 cm higher than the terrible 1998 flood and we anticipate total devastation. See the ABC news report and footage. 

We are not allowed to go to Nauiyu ourselves yet, but we know we've lost everything in the building, plus our insurance does not cover flooding because of our location. This means our business has been disrupted and, we will have a big, daunting job to clean up, try to replace equipment and eventually get back into production. We've been recently told that the homes may not be habitable for 5+ months.  

The Campaign video

We never expected to share this video widely. We were trialling some new approaches to social media content - basically mucking about. It was a Friday afternoon after a big week of printing and Kieren and Flick were both tired and there was no-one to film them, so they tried this format. If you visit our Facebook or Instagram you'll see we quite often posted reels of printing activity, so this was a change. Of course we didn't have any idea what was coming - it's now become archival footage of a workshop that no longer exists. Please excuse its amateurism.

What you can do

We'd love your help. By supporting this campaign, in whatever way, you will be making a BIG contribution to getting us back on our feet.

You can support us in any of the following ways:

• learn more about us and our fantastic art centre
• make a donation - any amount will be appreciated
• choose a reward  - you get something lovely as appreciation for your support
• share our campaign with people who might be interested 
• visit our website and online store and go shopping. We'll be topping it up with stock during the campaign.

About us

Merrepen Arts was founded in 1986 by a group of senior women (above) on Malak Malak land on the picturesque banks of the Daly River, in the Big Rivers region of the Northern Territory. The art centre is the artistic and cultural hub of Nauiyu community. More than eight language groups from the wider region now call Nauiyu (Daly River) home. 

We were on track to have a terrific year celebrating a special anniversary. It's a very significant milestone. We just learned that we have the opportunity to present our 40th Anniversary Exhibition at Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair in August 2026, We have been offered two large rooms for a feature exhibition, as well as our normal DAAF stall (see us at DAAF in 2025 below).

How our art centre functions

Merrepen Arts is a 100% locally owned and governed non-profit art centre. The members are all residents of Nauiyu Community (Daly River). It works like a cooperative - the members make the art and all proceeds are split between the artist/craftsperson and the art centre. Our members paint, create limited edition prints on paper and also print on fabric. The art centre's share of proceeds goes back into supporting the art centre  through buying art materials, fabrics and inks, organising marketing, keeping our vehicl running etc.. 

The good news

Thankfully half our art centre, the gallery with all our paintings, prints and archives, is in an elevated building. You can see it above. We still have all our wonderful paintings and limited edition prints and some beautiful fabrics. The floodwaters didn't reach them. We can also ask partners to print some fabrics for us offsite, we have screens with them in Sydney with Publisher Textiles and in Melbourne with Print Ink. So we have some lovely stock, we just need to find customers. 

The not so good news

But the other half of our art centre, our screen print workshop (above with Kenneth and Kieren printing in. happier times) and sewing rooms and kitchen. storeroom and toilets, are on ground level. The first flood in February was not so bad for us, but ... the second one was different. It's exceeded the record set in 1998. The workshop has been filled with water and we will have damage and total destruction to our table, screens, heat setting oven and screen exposure unit as well the printing inks and fabrics in stock waiting to be printed. It's also where we house our art materials. Due to short notice for the second flood and rapid evacuation, we didn't get time to place things high. The disruption to our business has already been terrible for us. For months we haven't been able to print in our own workshop, we can't paint with all the moving around and stress, and we need every cent we can to clean up, assess the damage and rebuild our business when we finally get home ... again! 

Like to know more about our relationship with the Daly River? 

The River is so important to the community in many ways. Here's a lovely video made by Red Dust Role Models in 2021 with kids from Nauiyu for the Music/Story Telling Program, The young people at St Francis Xavier School and Wooliana School worked together to write and record a song and video about the river and it's significant cultural importance to the community. See it here RIVER RIVER

All the funds will go into supporting our members and to grow our stock levels so we can get stronger through trading. Plus a bit to get some quality images so we can promote and sell existing original artworks online.

Our aim: $35,000

$10,000 for art materials to create new works - canvas, paints and brushes

$2,500 for a photographer to come and photograph all our original artworks in the Gallery so we can put them online

$10,000 to place orders with our partners Publisher Textiles and Print Ink to print our designs on fabric

$12,500 payments to artists*

*NB: when a selected reward is a print or original artwork - a percentage of the payment goes to the artist to support them in this difficult period.

If we raise more than $35,000 this is how we will spend it 

$10,000 for fabrics and screenprint inks for when we can resume printing onsite.

$10,000 for the hire of the Exhibition Rooms at Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair in August 2026 for our 40th Anniversary Exhibition.

$5,000 to pay for the hire equipment including Audio Visual for the 40th Anniversary Exhibition.