Description
This T-Shirt features Dhopiya’s painting of Marwat. It references the threads of the material known as galiku, djårritjarri or manydjarrka. This is the cloth which the Makassans would bring and share with Yolŋu as a part of the broader family in return for their labour and access to trepang. As per the songs and often practiced dances relating to this material a part of the story is the fraying under impact fro the winds. This then reveals the nature of the material to be similar to that of Yolŋu cosmology made up of many threads like the family connections that embody gurruṯu. The lines are made with the fine lines of the marwat or line brush made from a few strands of straight hair usually from a young girl. This is a distinctive Yolŋu painting apparatus and style which is manifest here in its most reductive form.
Galiku is also a material used for dancing. Yirritja people, men, women, children, wear it during Garma and other times for funerals, or the kids dancing at school. It’s special. We Gumatj identify ourselves with yellow fabric. Inside the Galiku is cotton and if you tear it off you see the threads. Galiku is the material that makes the flags and the sails of the praus. Our dance and song celebrates the North wind which brings those boats carrying our family back to us. It sings the wind which snatches at the flags makes them climb and fly and then frays them and finally whips them away as it becomes the cyclone.
