Presented by the Art Gallery of New South Wales and curated by Cara Pinchbeck in collaboration with Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yolŋu Power: The Art of Yirrkala traces eighty years of artistic practice rooted in northeast Arnhem Land. These art forms continue to sustain the cultural, political and social life of Yirrkala, bearing the imprint of place, of kinship and of the shifting negotiations that have maintained Yolŋu governance across generations. The exhibition opens by making this continuity tangible through the very arrangement of the entry space. Marika’s artist statement “Slow down… walk with us.” merges with curatorial framing to create something that exceeds standard museum didactics. This collaborative threshold establishes a sense of shared discovery rather than institutional instruction from the exhibition's opening moments. Opposing this hybrid welcome, Marika's The Other Side (2017) unfolds across five hours, the durational work functioning both as direct viewing experience and ambient continuity that suffuses the entire entry. It is clear Yolŋu Power demands a different kind of witnessing, an antithesis to the accelerated pace of contemporary consumption.
Sharing the space, contemporary works, such as Gunybi Ganambarr’s Ganambarr 2021, hold their own quiet authority. Found industrial materials, aluminum and steel, from Country are transformed through electric etching into carriers of sacred design, asserting cultural presence through the very substances of colonial infrastructure. Each etched line carries the weight of ancestral knowledge while simultaneously demonstrating that this knowledge remains dynamically alive, capable of inhabiting whatever materials serve its purposes. What strikes me about their placement here is how they prepare the ground for deeper cultural encounters without announcing themselves as preliminary or introductory.
Moving deeper into the exhibition, the metal works find fulfillment in the Rumbal series (2022-23), where miny'tji emerges in its ancestral form. The transition reveals what was always present, those contemporary etchings were never departures from tradition but expressions of knowledge systems that have persisted across centuries. Here, in a darkened space, sixteen bark paintings created by senior men are suspended in semicircles, bearing the sacred clan designs from Miwatj and Laynhapuy country. Rumbal, meaning both "body" and "true", names the dual authority these works carry. The patterns traditionally painted on ceremonial bodies now inhabit bark surfaces, but their function remains unchanged: they are acts of law made visible, assertions of Yolŋu sovereignty that continue to govern contemporary life. The parliamentary arrangement of these works gestures across time, honoring the first painting shared beyond Yirrkala in 1935 while maintaining their role as instruments of negotiation and cultural assertion.
What emerges from this ceremonial core is law in motion, the revelation of how these sacred designs have been mobilised across generations as both political assertion and cultural continuity. The following rooms trace this mobilisation through the visionary leadership of Mawalan Marika, whose transformation of Yolŋu painting into cultural diplomacy enabled the transmission of law into public institutions on Yolŋu terms. The eight paintings commissioned by AGNSW in 1959 stand as testament to this strategy. Mawalan Marika and Mungurrawuy Yunupiŋu, working with their families, created the Djan'kawu and Lany'tjun story paintings that revealed the complex relational structures of Yolŋu cosmology while marking the moment when Yolŋu painting gained recognition as art rather than ethnography.
Walking deeper into the exhibition, the sheer scale and density of works transforms my understanding of what’s truly being witnessed. The 1935 Methodist Overseas Mission, the Church Panels of 1962, the Näku Dhäruk (Bark Petition) of 1963, the Saltwater Collection, and the transformative 2008 Blue Mud Bay decision. These moments are not presented as historical footnotes; they are the catalysts for the art that fills these rooms, each piece a testament to as an unfolding terrain of cultural and legal assertion. While the Church Panels of 1962 and the Näku Dhäruk (Bark Petition) of 1963 are absent from these walls, their legacy permeates the room. The concentration of monumental barks and larrakitj by senior artists span decades, creating an overwhelming sense of accumulated cultural weight. Each surface carries ancestral narratives through visual languages that operate simultaneously as story, law, and assertion of sovereignty. This collective authority exemplifies the strategic thinking embodied by artists like Narritjin Maymuru, whose vision extended far beyond individual artistic practice toward collective self-determination. Narritjin’s Djert (The sea eagle) (1958) offers a way into understanding this density. His work demonstrates the remarkable intellectual achievement these paintings represent, intricate symbolism rendered with meticulous attention to detail, ancestral narratives conveyed through subtle visual connections that speak across cultural boundaries while maintaining sacred integrity. Yet what becomes clear, looking across the room at the breadth of works, is that this level of sophisticated cultural communication was not exceptional but characteristic of an entire generation of artists who understood painting as diplomatic strategy.
Narritjin’s vision of independence, realised through that pioneering beachside gallery, established the foundation for what would become Buku-Larrŋgay Arts after the mission's closure. The dream he carried of Yolŋu-owned cultural enterprise now surrounds this room as living reality. But perhaps the most profound manifestation of this self-determining spirit lies in the expansion of who could claim that authority. Here, the exhibition introduces the work of women painters, marking a decisive broadening of artistic authority. This was a profoundly strategic shift, ensuring the continuation of identity and Country rights could be passed through matrilineal lines. Galuma Maymuru, Narritjin's daughter and among the first generation of Yolŋu women to paint miny'tji, stands as inheritor and innovator. Her Nyapilingu ga Guwak' (1999) and Sacred digging stick (1999) emphasise the transformational nature of the spiritual world, figures appearing and disappearing within Manggalili clan designs that represent the moving surfaces of rivers, sand, and sea. Galuma's work finds quiet dialogue with Marrnyula Munuŋgurr's Living by the Sea (1998), which departs from miny'tji entirely to depict daily life on Yolŋu terms. Part of the broader Saltwater Project's eighty barks, Marrnyula's painting represents the Djapu clan in Wandawuy homeland, asserting that the everyday, too, deserves artistic attention and cultural recognition.
The exhibition's latter half reveals cultural authority operating through different registers entirely. Moving beyond ceremonial declaration, these rooms explore how knowledge persists through daily attentiveness and collective creativity. This shift becomes possible through a fundamental reorientation of what constitutes legitimate artistic subject matter, guided by the Yolŋu dictum "if you paint the land, use the land". Entering the Yirrkala Print Space, this liberating constraint finds its perfect expression through experimental freedom that demonstrates how intimate observation and personal relationship to Country can generate new artistic expressions without compromising spiritual integrity. Here, eighty prints stretch across walls in loose rhythm, their playful energy exploring the textures and stories of the everyday, a medium that proved particularly generative for women artists forging their own practice outside the conventions of miny'tji.
The following space holds the energy of senior women who found themselves working outside traditional miny'tji pathways, discovering in this position the freedom to develop entirely new artistic approaches. Emerging from the Print Space, the ‘courtyard ladies’ transformed their generational position into collective innovation, each cultivating personal visual languages rooted in daily observation. Nyapanyapa Yunupiŋu's artistic evolution is an anchoring example of this transformation. Her Ganyu (2019) commands the space in suspension, a statement work whose rhythmic patterning of star forms speak to recurring themes across women's practice. The collective energy feels unmistakable, with celestial motifs appearing alongside botanical studies as legitimate territories of artistic exploration. This visible kinship between their works is a powerful curatorial statement in itself. The transitions enacts a curatorial arc which shifts my register of attention. I feel a soft destabilisation, moving from one mode of knowing, one that is structured and collective to another that is personal and affective. The exhibition reveals its sophisticated understanding here: that Yolŋu law encompasses not only inherited authority but also individual creative autonomy, both expressions equally vital to cultural continuity.
This synthesis of inherited law and individual vision finds its most powerful and moving apotheosis in Rarrirarri (2023). The Mulka Project's immersive installation renders the drawings of the late Mulkuṉ Wirrpanda as digital animation, trails of termites, ants, and butterflies projecting across a towering three-meter termite mound. Her voice reverberates through the entire gallery space, creating sonic continuity that holds together the varied expressions surrounding it. The work carries profound genealogical significance: Mulkuṉ an elder who held the rare position of ceremonial leader within Yolŋu law, connects directly to Ishmael Marika, her grandson who serves as the Mulka Project's creative director and whose own work greeted visitors at the exhibition's threshold. This intergenerational dialogue is the very essence of The Mulka Project’s mission, an institution that operates as a living archive obligated to let contemporary Yolŋu knowledge speak to future generations while honoring ancestral voices.
The exhibition reveals its sophisticated understanding here: that Yolŋu law encompasses not only inherited authority but also individual creative autonomy, both expressions equally vital to cultural continuity. Following the radical daily observations of the women artists, a parallel sovereignty emerges, one founded not on new subjects but on new strategies of concealment. This is buwayak: a conscious veiling of sacred designs to protect their innate power. Where earlier works used figurative elements to make law legible to an outside world, buwayak signals a turn inward. The figurative covers of ancestral power begin to disappear from the surface, not from the work itself. Djambawa Marawili’s Lorr (2015) is a masterclass in this philosophy. Its complex miny’tji alludes to the form of Burrut’tji the eel, suggesting his presence through pattern and movement rather than direct depiction. It’s an assertion of what Djambawa calls “the full power that has been given to us,” a protective act that shields sacred knowledge from over-exposure while amplifying its force.
The exhibition’s placement of this section is astute. It presents buwayak not as a retreat, but as another form of sovereign adaptation, in dialogue with the material experimentation seen elsewhere. We are circled back to Gunybi Ganambarr’s incised rubber Gapu (2017), where an industrial conveyor belt is reclaimed to carry freshwater designs. In turn, a younger artist like Wurrandan Marawili takes this a step further. His breathtaking Gamata: flames beneath the sea (2024) sculpts the diamond pattern of Maḏarrpa miny’tji into three-dimensional threads, a visual distillation of ancestral fire. These practices show that Yolŋu art is not about aesthetic consistency but relational ethics: sometimes the answer is to shield, sometimes to shine. But always, it is an artform that thinks through law, acts through place, and evolves without fracture.
Yolŋu Power collapses a linear timeline into what can only be described as an everwhen, where the strategic diplomacy of the 1950s speaks directly to the digital animations of today. The collaborative curation between AGNSW and Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre is the key that unlocks this depth, providing a model of institutional engagement that I hope is extended to other First Nations communities. From the other side, listening, it becomes clear that the invitation to “slow down… walk with us” was a generous act of cultural translation. We are not given answers but are instead guided through a living ecosystem of thought, a continuum of authority rooted in family, place, and the quiet, unshakeable power of seeing the world on Yolŋu terms.
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A review of the AGNSW exhibition tracing eighty years of Yirrkala artistic practice from northeast Arnhem Land. Beginning with Ishmael Marika's invitation to "slow down… walk with us," the piece examines how the exhibition serve cultural diplomacy, revealing Yolŋu art as living law rather than static ethnography. I trace the evolution from ceremonial miny'tji paintings through strategic cultural assertions like the 1963 Bark Petition, to contemporary innovations by women artists and the protective philosophy of buwayak.
The review explores how collaborative curation between AGNSW and Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre creates space for genuine cultural encounter, positioning Yolŋu knowledge systems as sophisticated diplomatic strategies that maintain sovereignty while engaging with colonial institutions on Indigenous terms.
The review explores how collaborative curation between AGNSW and Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre creates space for genuine cultural encounter, positioning Yolŋu knowledge systems as sophisticated diplomatic strategies that maintain sovereignty while engaging with colonial institutions on Indigenous terms.
I acknowledge that I am not First Nations. As a non-Indigenous writer, I approach this work with deep respect and do my best as an ally to bridge cultural gaps through thoughtful engagement, while recognising the limits of my perspective and the ongoing need to centre Indigenous voices and knowledge systems.
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