Yolngu are able to use art as a means of action because it is an integral part of their system of knowledge and way of life. It comes out of their past but it can also be an instrument of change and part of the process of community transformation as circumstances change. Those transformations are in part the consequence of European colonisation and the particular forms it has taken. In Arnhem Land, the establishment of mission stations created regions that cut across Indigenous societies in every way imaginable: kinship, language, regional trade, ceremony, and so on. Those missions, inevitably, over time became a focal point for regional Indigenous lives. They were not determining; and certainly connections remained strong across the region quite independent of introduced settlement patterns.^[9] The mission stations, however, had consequences on the way in which Indigenous societies articulated with Australia as a whole.

Yolngu artists acted in multiple frames. They painted the chests of boys in circumcision ceremonies, made ground sculptures and created complex sacred objects. They also, however, produced work for sale to outsiders, in the context of the evolving post-European settlement structures. While those settlements did not determine the particular form of the art, over time, the settlements became part of the process for creating subregional styles and individual artistic identities. Hence, within the Yolngu region, the art from Yirrkala, Milingimbi, Ramingining, Galiwin’ku and Maningrida all developed somewhat different trajectories according to local circumstances. Each community has been influenced by its particular local history, which provides different contexts for artistic intervention on a community basis. The history of the Yirrkala region includes a strong theme of national political action, in part because of the particular nature of their encounter with Europeans and the threat to their land posed by mining. Precisely those same underlying structures and potentials for action that enabled Yolngu to act as a community in the case of the Church Panels and Saltwater paintings also, however, enabled the Yolngu artists of the Ramingining region to participate in collaborative ventures such as the Aboriginal Memorial.^[10] Many similar processes can be seen at work in other regions of Indigenous Australia: the Ngurrara canvas produced by the Gidja people as part of their native title claim^[11] or the large canvas from artists from Kintore produced to support dialysis programs in Central Australia.

The pattern of mission and government settlement can also be seen to be a factor in producing stylistic differences within the region. Often the distinctive styles reflect diversities that already existed within the broader region but which began to be associated with particular communities. In north-eastern Arnhem Land, it is possible to distinguish between stylistic features of paintings produced in the Yirrkala region and those in the Milingimbi region even though they belong to the same group of interacting clans. Certain contemporary stylistic movements such as the buwuyak movement in the north of Blue Mud Bay influenced art from Yirrkala and not from Ramingining.^[12] In western Arnhem Land, the art produced by Kunwinjku-speaking peoples at Maningrida^[13] and Gunbalanya (Kunbarlanja)^[14] has diverged, with the former emphasising the tapestry-like covering of the surface form of the bark with intricate cross-hatching and the latter emphasising x-ray and figurative art. None of these particular differences is fixed in time, since the regional systems as a whole are dynamic and community art centres are in dialogue with each other. The Aboriginal Memorial generated from Ramingining in the 1980s provided the basis for the expansion of interest in hollow-log coffins as artworks from which the Yirrkala community benefited greatly.

A similar analysis could be made of the impact of community on art style in Central and Western Australia. The distinctive art styles associated with different community art centres are in part the product of recent local art histories: people working together in a community and creating works that express their contemporary regional identity. Location and interaction with the art market are clearly factors in creating and maintaining the distinctive differences between Balgo, Papunya, Yuendumu and Lajamanu. Interestingly, artists often move between those communities and, in some cases, switch styles according to where they are painting. The art being produced in each community differs over time and, as the writing of Central Australian art histories develops, patterns of cross-influence will emerge.^[15]