Artiste : Dhopiya Yunupiŋu (1950)

Titre de l'œuvre : Galiku Buŋgul - Cloth Dance

Pigments naturels sur écorce

Format : 76 x 65 cm

Provenance et certificat original : centre d'art aborigène de Yirrkala

Référence de la peinture : 1974-22

© Photo : Aboriginal signature with the courtesy of the artist & Buku-Larrngay Mulka.

Explication de l’œuvre :

This piece was made for an exhibition by the artist Dhopiya Yunupiŋu at Sullivan & Strumpf in Sydney in 2023. Accompanying that exhibition was te following essay;

At the heart of the exhibition is a stark historical fact. English people were not the ‘first contact’ with Australians.

The evidence for this is itself contained in a painting. A rock art site at Djulirri in the Wellington Range of North Western Arnhem has a yellow Makassan prau (boat) which lies under a beeswax ‘snake’. The snake has been shown to have been laid down no later than AD 1664.

An expansive set of stone arrangements at Wurrwurrwuy near Ḏaliwuy Bay depict praus showing the internal arrangements of the vessels, which is rare in Aboriginal depictions of praus in any medium. The creators of the stone pictures would have acquired their knowledge of the internal arrangement of praus during visits to, or voyages on, such vessels.

Dhopiya’s father Muŋgurrawuy drew a crayon representation of Makassar City for the anthropologist Ronald Berndt in 1947.

Until the turn of the last century the annual visitations of the Makassanese to the Top End shores of Australia were a lynchpin of the Yolŋu economy and society.

These visits were banned by the newly formed Australian Government from 1901.

These sailors, gatherers of trepang from coastal waters, had for up to six centuries caught the seasonal winds back and forth from what is now known as Sulawesi…

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