Page 10 - Reside Magazine Briggs Freeman
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Up Front
ART
Beyond the Stars Known as Star Lady before she died in 2012, sister Nyapanyapa—all from the collection
painter Gulumbu Yunupiŋu spent the last of Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria,
Masterpieces of Australian decade of her life depicting no smaller it describes itself as the largest-ever display
Indigenous art are set to wow subject than the universe—or Garak as it’s of Indigenous art outside Australia. “The scale
North American audiences called by the Yolngu, the people from of this exhibition is unprecedented, but what
northeast Arnhem Land in the Northern sets it apart is the exceptional quality of the
Territory of Australia. Her distinctive bark works,” says its curator Myles Russell-Cook,
paintings consist of numerous cross-shaped the artistic director and CEO of the Australian
stars, each one with small dots (or watchful Centre for Contemporary Art.
“eyes”) at its center. For Yunupiŋu, these Indigenous nations have inhabited Photos: © The Estate of Ms N. Yunupiŋu, courtesy of Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala; Christian Markel/NGV. © Emily Kam Kngwarray/Copyright Agency; © The Estate of Alec Mingelmanganu, licensed by Aboriginal Artists Agency/Copyright Agency.
pieces were not only depicting what she the country for more than 65,000 years,
saw when she looked up at the night skies, he notes, making them one of “the world’s
but all that exists beyond the naked eye. oldest continuing cultures.”
This notion now serves as inspiration It’s this longevity, in part, that is driving
for “The Stars We Do Not See: Australian the rise in appreciation for Indigenous
Indigenous Art,” a monumental exhibition Australian art, Russell-Cook believes, as
at the National Gallery of Art in Washington well as the talent of its current practitioners.
D.C. this fall, which will tour North America Archie Moore’s “Kith and Kin,”
to Colorado, Oregon, Massachusetts and a meticulous hand-drawn genealogy of
Toronto into 2028. Indigenous lives lost, won the Golden Lion
Featuring over 200 works by more than at the 2024 Venice Biennale, making him the
130 artists—including Yunupiŋu and her first Australian artist to take home the prize.
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