Provenance
Buku Larrngay Arts, NT
Private Collection, NSW
Cooee Art, NSW
Story
Gulumbu Yunupingu had already lived a full and busy life before becoming an artist of international standing. Parent, teacher, health worker, translator and compassionate friend to many in her community, she attributed the beginning of her painting career (at the age of 56), to a dream/vision she had while camping out under the stars. The voice was strong, she recalls: “Do this!” The stories she paints, on bark and on larrakitj (ceremonial poles), hark back to her childhood years when her parents told her the traditional Ancestral stories of her Yolgnu heritage. She inherited the right to paint them from her father, the clan leader and artist, Munggurraway Yunupingu (one of the original presenters of the bark petition). Gulumbu Yunupingu states that her art is about the entire universe, stars that can be seen by the naked eye as well as everything beyond and before. She believes that the night sky can bring people of all places and times together, in harmony: “There is healing for people,” she said, “when they see beauty.”
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