Born at Yirrkala Mission in north-east Arnhem Land in 1951, Galuma Maymuru is the surviving daughter of artist and leader Narritjin Maymuru. Recognising her talent, her father trained her to paint the sacred clan designs that were previously and only the domain of high ranking men, making Galuma one of the first generation of Yolngu women to emerge as a major artist.
Like her father, Galuma is an advocate of the benefit of her Homelands. Since 1974, Galuma has lived either at the homeland centre of Yilpara or at Dhuruputjpi in her husband Dhukal Wirrpanda’s Dhudi Djapu clan country, close to her own Manggalili clan lands. For ten years she was the community’s schoolteacher, before becoming a full-time artist. Anthropologist Howard Morphy noted that “She became one of the set of artists associated with the homeland centres of the north of Blue Mud Bay – Djambawa Marawilli (https://www.daao.org.au/bio/djambawa-marawili-1/) and Bakulangay Marawili, Wukun Wanambi and Wanyubi Marika — who produced highly innovative works, developing the trajectory of Yolngu art.” Other important artists from Blue Mud Bay, featured in the important exhibition project Djalkiri: We are standing on their names (2010), include Marrirra Marawili, Marrnyula Mununggurr (https://www.daao.org.au/bio/marrnyula-mununggurr/), Liyawaday Wirrpanda and Mulkun Wirrpanda (https://www.daao.org.au/bio/mulkun-wirrpanda/), and invited guests John Wolseley (https://www.daao.org.au/bio/john-wolseley/), Fiona Hall (https://www.daao.org.au/bio/fiona-hall/) and Judy Watson (https://www.daao.org.au/bio/judy-watson/). Howard Morphy wrote, “Yolgnu artists saw it their role to, make people welcome within their place, while also showing them the ancestral footprint (Djalkiri, 2010) of their land. Their practice in art as a means of transporting place and knowledge of place.”
Galuma’s painting of barks and larrakitj with natural earth pigments represent this landscape in north of Blue Mud Bay, where she uses the seasons cycle as a way of connecting to the spirit of her homeland and its ancestors. The intricate and overlapping patterns, reflective of a figurative style, are complex and sophisticated, each line is representative of the waters, sands, animals and ancestors that are intrinsically tied to her country. “Underlying the paintings is a rich reservoir of ancestral law of the Dhudi Djapu and Manggalili clans.” Her designs draw on and abstract sacred ancestral designs, not only creating a continuous dialogue between ceremonial tradition and law, but also to her country.
“Her first solo exhibition in 1999 at the William Mora Galleries, Melbourne, was subtitled In memory of Narritjin, as an acknowledgment to her father. She learned by watching Narritjin paint and then worked on small bark paintings herself, practising the techniques ‘until my hand got better, putting it into my mind.”
In preparation for the exhibition (1999), Galuma rang through to Buku-Larrngay Mulka Centre with the following biographic statement, “This is what I really learnt from my father. First when I was still in school at Yirrkala he used to let me sit next to him, me and my brothers and he used to show us all the paintings from Wayawu and Djarrakpi. And he’d say this is our paintings and I’m telling you this about the paintings for in the future when I’m passed away you can use them. Then I forgot all this when I was in school – then I stopped but I was still thinking the way he was teaching us. Then one day I decided to start on a bark by helping him at Yirrkala. Every afternoon after work I used to sit with him and paint little barks – mostly from Djarrakpi but a little from the freshwater country at Wayawu but not Mil\aywuy. Then I was keep on doing it over and over on cardboard until my hand it gets better and better and I put it in my mind, then it was working and I kept on doing it. I went to Djarrakpi with my family to live with my father and my mother and brothers. My brothers passed away and we had to go back to Yirrkala. I left my father and mother there when I went to live at Båniyala. My husband’s family were living there. I was teaching at the Båniyala school still doing a little bit of painting but mainly schooling. When my father and family died I stopped painting – just doing school work. Once I moved to Dhuruputjpi in 1982/3 I started to paint again because no one else was doing it and I was thinking about the way my father was talking and how did he handle all this. How did my father do all this – travel and paint – how to handle this painting so I kept on thinking? I’m not really prouding myself but I want to do this painting as my father did it and to keep it in my mind. But I really want this painting to keep going. My gurru\ (Djambawa Marawili) he is looking after it as his Måri (mothers, mothers side) and others are looking after it also. I have to teach my kids in case someone might steal the designs. So my kids can know what their mother’s paintings is.”
Over the past thirty years, Galuma has taken part in multiple solo and group exhibitions in Australia and around the world. In 1984, she was selected to be in the first National Aboriginal Art Awards Exhibition at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin and, in 2003, she won the prestigious Best Bark Category. Since then, Galuma has been selected for overall nine NATSIA exhibitions. Galuma still lives in the remote homelands of Dhuruputjpi, Djarrakpi or Yilpara, where she sometimes works alongside her daughter Liawaday Wirrpanda, who has also evolved as major artist. Both Galuma and Liawaday exhibited together in 2015 in the Mother to Daughter: On Art and Caring for Homelands exhibition (http://crossart.com.au/archive/96-2015-exhibitions-projects/274-mother-to-daughter-on-art-and-caring-for-homelands) at The Cross Art Projects as a part of Contemporary Art and Feminism. Galuma exhibited in a cross-conversation with Darwin-based print maker, Jacqueline Gribbin in the Art of Memory, Fish and Crabs: Jacqueline Gribbin and Galuma Maymuru exhibition (2017) (http://www.crossart.com.au/archive/111-2017-exhibitions-projects/325-crabs-fish-and-death-jacqueline-gribbin-and-galuma-maymuru). “To Galuma, art is an act of memory and a process of transmission, in which she passes Manggalili law on to new generations of her clan. Equally, it is a spiritual and aesthetic exploration of and engagement with her homeland.”
Reference List
Brody, Anne Marie. Larrakitj: Kerry Stokes Collection. Perth: Australian Capital Equity, 2011.
Buku-Larrngay Mulka Centre. Saltwater – Paintings of Sea Country – The Recognition of Indigenous Sea Rights. Yirrkala: Buku-Larrngay Mulka Centre, 2014.
Cameron, Angus. Djalkiri: We are standing on their names. Darwin: Nomad Art Productions, 2010.
Morphy, Howard. “Galuma Maymuru.” Art Gallery of New South Wales. Last modified 2017, https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/artists/maymuru-galuma/?tab=profile.
Morphy, Howard. Galuma Maymuru: The torrent bark paintings and ceremonial. Curated by Anne and Bill Gregory. Sydney: Annandale Galleries, 2014. Exhibition catalogue.
Morphy, Howard. “In the Mind’s Eye: The paintings of Galuma Maymuru.” In Galuma Maymuru, 11-12. Annandale Galleries: Sydney, 2007.
Morphy, Howard. “Making artwork together on Blue Mud Bay.” In Djalkiri: We are standing on their names, edited by Angus Cameron, 8-13. Nomad Art Productions: Darwin, 2010.
Morphy, Howard. “Manggalili art and the Promised Land.” In Painting the Land Story by Luke Taylor, 55-74. National Museum of Australia: Canberra, 1999.
Taylor, Luke. “Formal Components of Bark Paintings.” In Seeing the Inside by Luke Taylor, 127-147. Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1996.
Taylor, Luke. “Transforming Figures.” In Seeing the Inside by Luke Taylor, 194-224. Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1996.
- Writers:
-
emma_sheehan
- Date written:
- 2017
- Last updated:
- 2017
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