Nyapanyapa Yunupingu

Nyapanyapa Yunupingu (born c.1945) has been compared with Aboriginal artists Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910-1996) and Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori (c.1924-2015). Given a late start as a painter, her work appears to move seamlessly between what traditional Aboriginal bark painting looks like and contemporary abstraction. Yet these mooted parallels fall flat when Yunupingu asserts that her work is mayilimiriw – meaningless – in contrast to the paintings of Kngwarreye and Gabori, which are expressions of their relationships with country.

Yunupingu’s interest lies in the paint, its rhythms, form, line and colour. She sidesteps cultural expectations about Yolngu women by choosing not to engage with ancestral narratives. When approached about an interview with Yunupingu, Will Stubbs, her friend and Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Art Centre