A new exhibition from the University of Western Australia's Berndt Museum which brings together a diverse display of printed works by Indigenous artists to explore the nature of printmaking opens on Friday, February 11.

Inhabiting the Trace at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery is curated by Palyku woman Jessyca Hutchens, and explores "processes of revisiting, reworking, and retelling while conveying traces of other forms - artwork, archive, story, memory and country".

Artworks featured include printed works by Peter Cameron, Paddy Carlton, Queenie McKenzie, Brett Nannup, Laurel Nannup, Lena Nyadbi, Ngarralja Tommy May, and Mervyn Street, as well as The Berndt Etching Series (2008) - a series of 27 prints by artists from the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre that were made in response to the 1946-1947 Yirrkala crayon drawings.

The exhibition also delves into histories of printmaking, exploring the ongoing collaborations and shifts to artistic practice brought about by artists and art centres working with printmaking techniques from the 1990s onwards.

Ms Hutchens told National Indigenous Times the museum held an important cultural collection.

"It is very important for us to be able to do exhibitions, to continue the work we do in terms of working with Indigenous communities and telling Indigenous stories," she said.

"There's the Yirrkala print works, an etching series of 27 works, created in response to a collection of drawings done in the 1940s. Some of the etching series was created by descendants of the artists who created those drawings.

"It also shows the agency of Indigenous artists... there is a strong interaction between the collection and the community."

The museum holds one of the most significant collections of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and cultural material globally, containing more than 12,000 items and 35,000 photographs.

The exhibition will be held at the Janet Holmes à Court Gallery at Lawrence Wilson from February 12 to April 23.