Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings

The Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings (AGOD) is a Melbourne-based art gallery devoted to Australian Aboriginal art, located in Cheltenham, a southeastern suburb of Victoria, Australia. Founded and owned by art collector Hank Ebes, it was established as one of the first galleries in Melbourne dedicated entirely to Aboriginal art. Over more than three decades, AGOD has built a reputation for direct commissioning from artists and communities, amassing a substantial collection that has supported exhibitions, international loans, and scholarly engagement with Indigenous Australian visual culture.

AGOD originated in the late 1980s when Hank Ebes, a Dutch immigrant who arrived in Australia in 1962, opened a small gallery space at 37 Bourke Street in Melbourne's central business district. The initial collection comprised roughly two hundred paintings sourced from Utopia and Alice Springs. The gallery's first major international exhibition drew largely from works acquired during Ebes's April 1990 trip to Delmore Downs, near Utopia, where he collected 120 acrylic paintings on canvas, supplemented by an additional 250 works purchased sight unseen shortly thereafter.

Growth necessitated relocation in early 1990 to larger premises at 73-77 Bourke Street, where the gallery remained for nearly two decades. Anticipating further expansion, AGOD purchased a 2,500-square-metre warehouse at 11-15 Christensen Street, Cheltenham, in 2001. When the Bourke Street lease expired in 2008, operations transferred entirely to the Cheltenham facility.

In 2009, more than 200 works by Emily Kame Kngwarreye were separated from the main collection to form the core of a proposed Melbourne museum. After failing to secure government funding, the Emily Museum opened in early 2013 alongside AGOD in Cheltenham, featuring the monumental 5-by-15-metre "Emily Wall" and works from Kngwarreye's Last Series. It was the first museum devoted to a single Aboriginal artist, though it closed after three years.

AGOD's collection emphasizes paintings commissioned directly from artists, communities, and trusted agents in Alice Springs and remote desert locations. By its own account, the gallery has commissioned over 12,500 paintings from more than 500 artists, with more than 10,000 works sourced directly from Utopia, Northern Territory, by May 2019. The holdings focus on works from the Central Desert, Western Desert, and Utopia regions, spanning from early experiments in the 1970s to large-scale contemporary canvases. The gallery maintains particular depth in Utopia-style acrylics and desert dot painting traditions, with an emphasis on provenance, quality, and cultural integrity. The collection includes museum-grade stretchers and significant private holdings of select artists' oeuvres.

The collection features major works by prominent Aboriginal artists including Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri, Rover Thomas, and Minnie Pwerle alongside her sisters. Gloria Petyarre, Pansy Napangardi, Timmy Payungka Tjapangati, Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri, Barbara Weir, and the four Pwerle sisters are also represented.

A landmark project was the 1996 NANGARA exhibition, named after a term coined by Clifford Possum meaning "a very special place." Held at Oud Sint-Jan in Bruges, Belgium, from March to June, it showcased over 350 pivotal paintings from the Central and Western Deserts. Emily Kame Kngwarreye's monumental 1996 painting My Country (15 by 5 metres) served as a centerpiece of NANGARA and remains displayed in Cheltenham. The gallery also handled significant market transactions, including the record-breaking sale of Clifford Possum's Warlugulong (1977), which fetched A$2.4 million at Sotheby's in 2007 to the National Gallery of Australia.

AGOD's current premises occupy a 2,500-square-metre warehouse at 11-15 Christensen Street, Cheltenham, approximately 30 minutes southeast of Melbourne's central business district and near Sandown Racecourse. The facility, originally part of Ebes's antique print operations, was acquired in 2001 and refurbished to serve as the gallery's base. The space supports research, archiving of over 50,000 photographs, video preservation, publishing, and hosting of international exhibitions by appointment.

The Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings operates from 11-15 Christensen Street, Cheltenham, VIC 3192, by appointment. The gallery maintains an official website at agod.com.au and can be contacted by telephone at (03) 9650 3277. It continues to function as an independent venue showcasing Aboriginal artworks, with in-house stock clearance auctions conducted since 2011, including an inaugural auction on 20 November 2011 featuring 350 lots without commissions. The gallery's operations remain tied to Hank Ebes's direct ownership and curatorial vision, with the Cheltenham facility serving as the primary point of access for collectors, researchers, and visitors.