Gululu dhuwala djalkiri: welcome to the Yolŋu foundations, installation view, 2020. Foreground: Lipalipa (dugout canoe) with dhomala (pandanus sail). The exhibition features work by artists from Milingimbi, Ramingining and Yirrkala, eastern Arnhem Land.
In eastern Arnhem Land, Yolŋu people have been making art for millennia. Their art traces djalkiri (ancestral footsteps) and expresses Yolŋu Rom (Law).
The 350 works in Gululu dhuwala djalkiri represent generations of Yolŋu artists and include pieces dating back to the period following the establishment of Methodist missions in the Yolŋu territories of Milingimbi and Yirrkala, the late 1920s and 1940s. Anthropologists from the University of Sydney acquired artworks and objects, and took photographs in these communities, as an integral part of their research. The exhibition also features a large number of artworks from the JW Power collection, acquired in the 1980s through Djon Mundine, a Bandjalung curator and then Art Advisor for the Ramingining community.
A stunning new multimedia work by Patrina Munuŋgurr, from Yirrkala, and a series of painted hollow-log memorial poles acquired from the 2016 Milingimbi Makarraṯa (a peace-making event between museums and local Yolŋu communities) demonstrates the continuity of Yolŋu artistic practice.
The exhibition was developed in consultation with three Yolŋu art centres representing the regions where the works were created. Elders from the Milingimbi, Yirrkala and the Ramingining communities were instrumental, working with museum curators to design the layout, grouping and interpretation of the works.
The striking paintings and sculptures in Gululu dhuwala djalkiri represent more than 20 Yolŋu clan groups and 100 artists.
Gululu / welcome this; here is
Dhuwala / footsteps; spiritual foundation
Djalkiri /ancestral imprint on the landscape
SOURCE: Chau Chak Wing Museum, University of Sydney.