By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
Font ResizerAa
logo;subscribe
  • All About You
  • Animal Magic
  • Show Me The Money
  • Stage and Page
  • Sportiness
  • Press Club
Irresistible MagazineIrresistible Magazine
Search
  • Categories
    • All About You
    • Animal Magic
    • Festivals Of Joy
    • Heroic Ideas
    • Life’s A Gallery
    • On the Screen
    • Stage and Page
    • Press Club
    • Out and About
    • Show Me The Money
    • Sportiness
    • We Miss You
Follow US
© 2024 Irresistible Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
Irresistible MagazineIrresistible MagazineIrresistible Magazine
  • Festivals Of Joy
  • On the Screen
  • Life’s A Gallery
  • Heroic Ideas
  • We Miss You
  • Out and About
Irresistible MagazineIrresistible Magazine
Search
  • Categories
    • All About You
    • Animal Magic
    • Festivals Of Joy
    • Heroic Ideas
    • Life’s A Gallery
    • On the Screen
    • Stage and Page
    • Press Club
    • Out and About
    • Show Me The Money
    • Sportiness
    • We Miss You
Follow US
© 2024 Irresistible Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
media releases art

Yolŋu power: the art of Yirrkala Is The Talk Of Sydney And An Art Map To The Past And To Our Futures

Eight decades of Yolŋu art, culture and power will radiate at the Art Gallery of New South Wales until 6th October 2025

June 30, 2025
Installation view of the ‘Yolŋu power: the art of Yirrkala’ exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 21 June – 6 October 2025, all artworks © the artists, Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala, 📸 Irresistible Images
SHARE

For almost 90 years, artists at Yirrkala have shared art as a means of cultural diplomacy – as a respectful assertion of power in its diverse forms, from sovereignty to influence, authority and control, to energy, strength and pride. Yolŋu power: the art of Yirrkala showcases the extraordinary artists of Yirrkala in north-east Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, and the power of their art from the 1940s to the present.

Presented in partnership with the Indigenous art centre in Yirrkala, Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, the exhibition brings together almost 300 works by 98 artists and considers the significant moments in Yirrkala’s history.

Installation view of the ‘Yolŋu power: the art of Yirrkala’ exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 21 June – 6 October 2025, all artworks © the artists, Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala, 📸 Irresistible Images

In covering multiple generations, Yolŋu power highlights familial connections and cultural continuation. It also contextualises the work of individual artists within the broader school of artists from Yirrkala and surrounding Miwatj Country, whose contribution to both Australian and, increasingly, international art, is profound.

Binygurr Wirrpanda speaking at the opening of the exhibition 📸 Irresistible Images

Yolŋu need gamunuŋgu ga manikay.

The designs and the songs. It comes from our body. It comes from our minds. It comes from the ground. This is where our power comes from. Each clan has its own essence and its own energy coming through its own identity. When all these separate powers combine into one infinite universal whole expressing all the facets of creation, this is the true Yolŋu power.

This power is coming to us from the past. It has been brought to us by our old people. It is flowing through each generation and getting stronger each time it is passed on.

Binygurr Wirrpanda

Chair, Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre

Binygurr Wirrpanda in front of his work at the ‘Yolŋu power: the art of Yirrkala’ exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, all artworks © the artists, Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala, 📸 Irresistible Images
‘Yolŋu power: the art of Yirrkala’ exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, all artworks © the artists, Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala, 📸 Irresistible Images

AGNSW director Maud Page spoke to assembled media at the opening about Yolŋu artists. “Through their work, they have asserted identity, told truth, and shaped change,” she said.” They bring a view of the world that is completely interrelated, with humans, dependent, nourished and giving to all living elements, in a way that in 2025, with everything that is happening here and internationally, we would do well to heed.”

Gaymala Yunupiŋu 'Wan’kurra ga djirikitj' 2001, screenprint, 54 x 37 cm, courtesy Buku Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala © Estate of Gaymala Yunupiŋu, courtesy Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre
Dhalmula #2 Burarrwaŋa 'Djomula' 2021, woodblock and linocut, 59 x 40 cm, courtesy the artist and Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala © Dhalmula #2 Burarrwaŋa, Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala

Yolŋu power considers the significant moments in Yirrkala’s history from the 1940s to the present when artists have consciously altered their practice, developed new styles or embraced new mediums. The unique exhibition design brings together bark paintings, drawings and prints on paper, and sculpture in both wood and metal together with immersive time-based art experiences. 

Yirrkala Meŋa Munuŋgurr 'Rumbal – Djapu freshwater' 2023, natural pigments on bark, 143 x 100 cm, courtesy of the artist and Buku Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala, © Meŋa Munuŋgurr, Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre
Noŋgirrŋa Marawili 'Garraŋali' 1998, colour screenprint, 50.1 x 51.5 cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Mollie Gowing Acquisition Fund for Contemporary Aboriginal Art 1998 © Estate of Noŋgirrŋa Marawili, Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala

Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre is an Indigenous community-controlled non-profit art centre in north-east Arnhem Land. The art centre is located on Rirratjiŋu country in Yirrkala, a small Aboriginal community on the north-eastern tip of the Top End of the Northern Territory, approximately 700 kilometres east of Darwin. The art centre supports the artists across more than twenty homeland centres in a 150-kilometre radius. ‘Buku-Larrŋgay’ means ‘the feeling on your face as it is struck by the first rays of the sun’ and ‘Mulka’ means ‘a sacred but public ceremony’.

Installation view of the ‘Yolŋu power: the art of Yirrkala’ exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 21 June – 6 October 2025, all artworks © the artists, Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala, photo © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Diana Panuccio

The Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre was established in the 1970s during the land rights movement as an act of Yolŋu self-determination. Decades earlier, artists at Yirrkala were among the first Indigenous Australians to employ art as a political tool, notably through the Yirrkala Bark Petitions of 1963 sent to the Australian Parliament to assert Yolŋu custodianship of country.

Mawalan Marika 'Djaŋ'kawu creation story' 1959, natural pigments on bark, 193 x 57.2 cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Gift of Dr Stuart Scougall 1959 © Estate of Mawalan Marika, Buku- Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala
Muŋgurrawuy Yunupiŋu 'The thunder spirits (Birimbira)' 1961, natural pigments on bark, 150.2 x 60.4 cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales, gift of Dr Stuart Scougall 1961 © Estate of Munggurrawuy Yunupingu, courtesy Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre

Highlights include work by the phenomenal Mawalan Marika and Muŋgurrawuy Yunupiŋu. In 1959, Mawalan Marika and Muŋgurrawuy Yunupiŋu led a major project for the Art Gallery of New South Wales, with Malawan painting the Djaŋ’kawu, who are revered for disseminating law to Dhuwa people, while Muŋgurrawuy painted Lany’tjuŋ, who is connected to the transmission of knowledge to Yirritja people.

Artists at Yirrkala subsequently collaborated to realise the Yirrkala Church Panels in 1962 and Yirrkala Bark Petitions in 1963, which each consist of two components, one Dhuwa and one Yirritja, reflecting the equilibrium within the Yolŋu world and a unified response to the threat of mining on their country.

Noŋgirrŋa Marawili 'Baratjala – lightning and the rock' 2018, natural pigments on bark, 201 x 85 cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales, purchased with funds provided by the Aboriginal Art Collection Benefactors tour to Arnhem Land 2018 © Estate of Noŋgirrŋa Marawili, Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala
Ḏula Ŋurruwutthun 'Untitled' 2001, natural pigments on bark, 181 x 105 cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, purchased 2001 © Estate of Ḏula Ŋurruwutthun, Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala

The exhibition also demonstrates how Yolŋu artists have used art for politics and petition, as seen in the works from the Saltwater Collection of 1997–98 that document Indigenous sea rights, and Maḏarrpa leader Djambawa Marawili’s push to produce a new aesthetic that allowed the next generation of artists to explore new ways of working.

Installation view of Mulkuṉ Wirrpanda with The Mulka Project Rarrirarri 2023, as part of the Yolŋu power: the art of Yirrkala exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 21 June – 6 October 2025 © the artists and The Mulka Project, Yirrkala, photo © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Diana Panuccio

Another highlight is the digital work Mulkuṉ Wirrpanda with The Mulka Project Rarrirarri 2023.

For several female artists, their initial work in printmaking led to more expansive practices focused on the everyday. Mulkuṉ Wirrpanda spent ten years documenting plants in a secular manner, out of concern for a loss of knowledge about the plants she grew up eating. The digital work Rarrirarri was developed by The Mulka Project and close members of Mulkuṉ’s family following her passing. The work brings her paintings to life as plants grow, trailing across the floor and over the termite mound they are projected onto, insects emerge and fly through the foliage, and figures dance to the singing of Binygurr Wirrpanda, Muluymuluy and Mulkuṉ herself. As past and present coalesce, Rarrirarri offers a compelling portrayal of seasonal change.

Djon Mundine at ‘Yolŋu power: the art of Yirrkala’ exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 21 June – 6 October 2025, all artworks © the artists, Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala, 📸 Irresistible Images

Djambawa Marrawili, artist and leader of the Maḏarrpa clan, is recognised for his distinctive styles of painting which have been highly influential in Yolŋu artmaking since the mid 1990s. Speaking at the Sydney opening he said, “It is really important to share this Australia. 
What do you think of Australia? We need to make a humble peace for ourselves. 
If you cannot feel confidence and honour, then money cannot give you this. The money will turn you around into evil, and then we cannot feel no kinship, no relationships, no neighbours. What I’m saying, hear now. The message has been given to you guys. It’s really clear.”

Djambawa Marawili and Djon Mundine at the opening of ‘Yolŋu power: the art of Yirrkala’ exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales 📸 Irresistible Images
The gift shop 📸 Irresistible Images
Datjiŋ Burarrwaŋa painting 'Rumbal – Gumatj Maṯamata' 2023 at Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, photo © David Wickens, Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala
Marrnyula Munuŋgurr painting at Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala, 2020, photo © David Wickens, Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala

Alongside Yolŋu power is Yalu, a dramatic and immersive light and sound installation that brings the colours and songs of Yolŋu country to the Nelson Packer Tank, the former wartime oil bunker beneath the Art Gallery’s Naala Badu building.

Yalu is newly commissioned from the collective of Yirrkala artists and digital producers known as The Mulka Project, founded in 2007 within the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre as a digital production studio and living audiovisual archive. Today, The Mulka Project employs the latest technologies to realise complex time-based artworks such as Yalu.

Yalu can mean a crocodile nest, a termite mound, a womb, or a home – a sanctuary that protects new life. Grounded in these ideas of sanctuary, origin and kinship, Yalu evokes the shifting cycles of land and sea and the interconnected flow of culture in this special installation, which is open until 20 July 2025.

Installation view of 'Yalu’ 2025 by The Mulka Project at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 21 June – 20 July 2025, artwork © The Mulka Project, Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala, photo © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Diana Panuccio

During school holidays, children and families can discover the Yolŋu power exhibition through bespoke children’s tours led by First Nations educator Nebbi Boii.

Throughout the exhibition, families can join free kids drop-in workshops to make stringybark leaves and blossoms and busy bees inspired by the work of Yolŋu artist Gaypalani Waṉambi.

There’s also the Warakirri dining experience – a unique culinary and cultural journey created by Ngemba Weilwan woman Sharon Winsor of Indigiearth. It celebrates the rich world of Australian native foods, botanicals, culture and storytelling with an immersive five-course degustation accompanied by live performances, musical storytelling and insights into Aboriginal culture and cuisine.

Installation view of 'Yalu’ 2025 by The Mulka Project at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 21 June – 20 July 2025, artwork © The Mulka Project, Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala, photo © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Diana Panuccio

Yolŋu power: the art of Yirrkala will be on display at the Art Gallery of NSW, in the Ainsworth Family Gallery in Naala Badu from 21 June to 6 October 2025. 

Installation view of 'Yalu’ 2025 by The Mulka Project at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 21 June – 20 July 2025, artwork © The Mulka Project, Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala, photo © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Diana Panuccio

On Gadigal Country

Art Gallery of New South Wales
Art Gallery Road, The Domain
Sydney NSW 2000 Australia

You Might Also Like

Dark Mofo Has Finished, But Arcangelo Sassolino’s Australian Debut Exhibition-In The End, The Beginning- At Mona Continues

MCA Australia next generation of artists for Primavera 2025

Chair Of The Creative Australia Board Robert Morgan To Retire, And Deputy Chair Wesley Enoch AM Stepping Up To Acting Chair

Kiss Of Light Celebrates Queer Artistry On The Opera House Sails For Vivid Sydney

Janet Dawson Is Being honoured With Her First Retrospective At The Art Gallery of New South Wales This Year

Share
By Irresistible Magazine
Follow:
Where Resistance Meets Fabulousness
Previous Article
Parcels Have Three Massive Shows In Their AUSTRALIA LIVE ‘25 Tour – NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2025

Latest

Parcels Have Three Massive Shows In Their AUSTRALIA LIVE ‘25 Tour – NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2025
Dark Mofo 2025 wraps with Nude Solstice Swim
2025 Sundance Institute Ignite x Adobe Fellows Selected
The 2025 Sundance Institute Indigenous Film Tour Features Aussie Short Film Hit

Social links

  • Instagram
  • Spotify

Quick links

  • About
  • Information for contacts, media kit requests and advertising and partnership opportunities
  • Privacy (user agreement/ privacy/ terms/ collection notice/ cookies policy)

Useful links

  • Subscribe
  • Irresistible Agency
Irresistible MagazineIrresistible Magazine
Follow US
We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land where we work and live. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging. We celebrate the stories, culture and traditions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders of all communities who also work and live on this land.
Copyright Irresistible Magazine 2025. All rights reserved.
Subscribe

It's free to subscribe. When you do, you'll have unlimited access to all content. We will never share, publish, or use your information for anything other than essential business purposes. You'll get a monthly newsletter full of festival news, pre-sales, giveaways and irresistibleness. Your subscription helps us keep our content free.

* indicates required
Zero spam, Unsubscribe at any time.
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Lost your password?