MIRDIDINGKINGATHI JUWARNDA SALLY GABORI, Toppaa, 2006

MIRDIDINGKINGATHI JUWARNDA SALLY GABORI Kayardild language, 1924 - 2015 Toppaa, 2006 acrylic on linen 212 x 92 cm stamped verso: Mornington Island Arts & Crafts; inscribed verso: Artist Sally Gabori, Toppaa, Cat No 851-L-SG-0206, Medium synthetic polymer paint on linen PROVENANCE Mornington Island Arts & Crafts, Queensland, Cat No. 851-L-SG-0206 Woolloongabba Art Gallery, Queensland Private Collection, New South Wales Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Mornington Island Arts & Crafts Painted in 2006, Toppaa dates from the year after Kaiadilt elder Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori first took up a brush at Mornington Island Arts & Crafts, at the age of 81 years old. Masses of pale yellow, plum, lilac, white and peach press against a black core and rise into a blue field, each built from dense, dabbed circular strokes that give the paint the weight and tactility of the land it recalls. The Lardil people in the Kaiadilt community had little exposure to fine art, or any comparable form of mark-making, prior to that time. Traditional tools, objects, or bodies were scarcely painted, and the only recorded art that relates these stories was a group of drawings made at the request of ethnologist Norman B Tindale during his expedition to Bentinck Island in 1960, now housed in the South Australian Museum. Toppaa is essentially concerned with a meaningful site, known through the artist's intimate association during a lifetime spent on Bentinck Island. These sites are associated with tidal movement, seasonal change, major climatic events such as drought, and flood, and the presence of plants, sea birds, animals, and aquatic life. Gabori was mindful of the ebb and flow of life over all the seasons that made up her long life. As Djon Mundine eloquently put it. 'Her works can be thought of as a memory walk, and a mapping of her physical and social memory of Bentinck Island'.* * Djon Mundine, The Road to Bentinck Island: Sally Gabori, in The Corrigan Collection of Paintings by Sally Gabori, Macmillan Art Publishing, Melbourne, 2015 © SALLY GABORI / Copyright Agency, 2026

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