Description
This stunning publication is an illustrated survey of the diverse practice of Nyapanyapa Yunupiŋu. Bearing the same name as the exhibition, ‘the moment eternal: Nyapanyapa Yunupiŋu’ explores the life story of the artist and her unexpected rise from relative obscurity to become one of Australia’s most compelling contemporary artists.
For over two decades Nyapanyapa Yunupiŋu has worked from the remote community of Yirrkala in the Northern Territory, creating significant paintings, drawings, sculptures and screen-based works.
She had her first solo exhibition of bark paintings in 2008 in Sydney’s Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery. Her work has been exhibited at the Biennale of Sydney in 2012 and 2016.
In 2008, Yunupingu won the Wandjuk Marika Memorial 3D Prize in Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards with a piece that combined painting on eucalyptus bark with video to narrate a biographic event with in which she was gored by a buffalo in 1975. Her work around this incident was one of the inspirations and backdrop for ‘Nyapanyapa’, a dance choreographed by Stephen Page for Bangarra Dance Theatre which toured the United States.
In 2017, her abstract painting Lines was awarded the bark painting prize at the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. The work was subsequently acquired by the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT), in Darwin.
She was selected as one of the featured artists for the 2020 Australia-wide #KnowMyName initiative of the National Gallery of Australia.
Starting on 23 May 2020 a comprehensive solo exhibition of Yunupingu’s work, the moment eternal: Nyapanyapa Yunupiŋu was mounted at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. The exhibition features more than 60 works, and it is the first solo exhibition at MAGNT to feature work by an Aboriginal Australian artist.
The exhibition ’the moment eternal- Nyapanyapa Yunupuiŋu’ charts the evolution of her practice, which challenges the conventions of Yolŋu art making and has established her as an important Australian artist. This beautiful hardcover catalogue features images of all the works in the exhibition, Nyapanyapa’s life story in Yolŋu matha and English told by her sister Djerrkŋu, the narrative of the Seven Sisters songline in Yolŋu matha and English, essays by curator Luke Scholes and Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre co-ordinator Will Stubbs as well as over 100 pages of colour plates including archival photographs of Nyapanyapa’s early life.
Published: 2020
ISBN: 978-0-6486542-2-3
Number Of Pages: 168
