‘Like nothing you have seen before’: Meet the artists entrancing New York

Yirrkala is a small settlement on the lip of the Gulf of Carpentaria boasting a post office, a school, childcare centre, stores and cafe serving a population of 800 people.

The cultural influence of this tiny town, however, extends well beyond north-east Arnhem Land to which the Yolŋu people claim an unbroken ancestral connection.

Out of Yirrkala has come the renowned rock bands Yothu Yindi, King Stingray and the Garrangali, and a school of artists whose works are to be showcased in one of the most significant and stunningly beautiful exhibitions the Art Gallery of NSW has staged in its 154-year history, according to its director Maud Page.

Senior artist Yalmakany Marawili with her artwork Meditjin ga Borum 2024 (Edge of the jungle).Credit: Edwina Pickles

Seven years ago, Page travelled to the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, a place of artistic creative gathering since its establishment in 1976, renowned for producing bark paintings, decorated funerary poles and the yidaki.

She asked to reserve three works by the late painter and printmaker, Noŋgirrŋa Marawili, whose bark cloth paintings were recently acquired by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art for its Oceanic art collection.

“All three, and more on the walls, had already been bought by buyers in the US,” Page recalls. “The concentration of exceptional artists that are continuously renewing their practice with absolute agency on what they do, who they show with and sell to, has created unparalleled energy and attention nationwide and internationally.

“The works feel alive and breathing. They are about the now. Politically and socially. They work on us, on an aesthetic, and much deeper level.

“You know there is so much depth to the individual artworks; cosmology, human relationships, history and description and response to natural forms, but you can’t put your finger on it because it is like nothing you’ve ever seen.”

Artist Yinimala Gumana. Credit: Edwina Pickles

Yolŋu Power: The Art of Yirrkala brings together almost 300 works created over eight decades in a collaboration between AGNSW and one of Australia’s leading Aboriginal art centres – presented in the same gallery as the blockbuster exhibitions of international artists Louise Bourgeois and Cao Fei.

Gallery curator Cara Pinchbeck is reluctant to call it a retrospective. Instead, the exhibition has been organised around significant moments in Yirrkala’s history when artists have consciously altered their practice, developed new styles or embraced new mediums.

Featured are the works of at least four generations, and multiple families who anchor artist and community led practice at Yirrkala, including the father and sisters of Yothu Yindi’s late frontman, Mandawuy Yunupingu, and artists currently entrancing the international art world: Gunybi Ganambarr and Dhambit Munuŋgurr.

Artists from the Yirrkala region have repeatedly utilised art for the purposes of political activism, the most famous example being the Ṉäku Dhäruk or Bark Petitions in 1963, in which 12 clansmen petitioned the Australian Parliament to recognise the Yolŋu’s undying connection to Country and protest its decision to excise 300 square kilometres of Arnhem Land for bauxite mining.

Described as the Magna Carta for Australia’s Indigenous people, these petitions are credited with kick-starting the Indigenous land rights movement.

Painted in ochre, charcoal and pipeclay on petition borders are sacred designs or “miny’tji”, important patterns denoting the interconnection between Yolŋu people, law and Country, Pinchbeck says.

“Our power comes from the land which is alive,” says artist Yinimala Gumana when asked to explain why Yirrkala has become such a hotbed of creativity.

“We are its voice. It is our duty. Everyone, every human is an artist. In our culture we are required to express our identity be it through art, song, dance, ceremony or maintaining culture.”

In fact, the Yolŋu regard anthropologists’ use of the term Dreamtime as incorrect, puzzling, even annoying. A more accurate description of the circular structure of time is “everywhen”.

For Gumana, the right to paint was handed down from the men of his clan when he was a boy of 14. During the 1950s, Nyapililŋu and Galuma Maymuru were among the first women to be instructed in painting miny’tji.

“When the land rights movement is gaining momentum, the style of painting focuses on detailed paintings of country and schools of painters emerge within families,” Pinchbeck says. “In the 1990s there is an explosion of printmaking and women become central to the print studio, and then men generally join in.

“For some of the women who haven’t been instructed in painting of clan designs by their fathers there’s almost a hesitancy to paint those designs so printmaking introduces themselves to their own forms of self-expression.”

The departure from ancestral templates has in recent times led to more innovative use of reclaimed materials and metal by senior artist Ganambarr. Also represented is the audiovisual work by the centre’s Mulka Project, including a “live termite mound” and a multimedia light and sound installation in the 125-column The Tank gallery.

Yolŋu power: the art of Yirrkala runs until October 6.