NYAPANYAPA YUNUPINGU

As a person, she never fails to make a connection. Very slight and stooped and quite deaf her beaming, generous smile and loving embrace to all comers immediatelydisarms. And perhaps it is the spontaneity and generosity and humility of thesemarks which beguiles us. It forgives us and invites us. Illusory statusand high mindedness are left behind and it’s okay to just be. To revel in thesimplicity of our being. Our breath is our achievement. And it is enough. Notjust for ourselves but for our neighbour. After so many exhibitions with herclan sister Roslyn Oxley it is noticeable that each edition contains a subtleshift. The emphasis over the last year has been on stars and subtlycommemorates her status as a Yunupingu woman of the Gumatj clan and theYirritja moiety. These stars are the spirits of her seven sisters in theconstellation Djulpan, some departed and some just being.

• Will Stubbs, 2018

Nyapanyapa Yunupingu (born c.1945) presented a major installation Gäna (self) in Encounters as part of Art Basel Hong Kong 2018 curated by Alexie Glass-Kantor. In that same year she wasincluded in Sydney Contemporary. In 2016, Nyapanyapa Yunupingu was selected forthe 20th Biennale of Sydney: The future is already here- it’s just not evenly distributed, curated by Stephanie Rosenthal. Yunupingu was also selected for the 18th Biennale of Sydney: all our relations in 2012 by curators Catherine de Zegher and Gerald McMaster.

Yunupingu has been included in numerous group exhibitions worldwide. They include Marking the Infinite, Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum Florida International University, Miami, Florida (2017), Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, Arizona (2017) and Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane, New Orleans, USA (2016); Painting. More Painting, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Victoria (2016); The World is Not a Foreign Land, Ian Potter Museum of Art, Victoria (2014-2016), which toured to: ANU Drill Hall Gallery, ACT, Cairns Regional Gallery, QLD, Tweed River Art Gallery, NSW, Flinders University Art Gallery, SA, Latrobe Regional Gallery, VIC and Yirrkala Drawings, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2014).

Nyapanyapa Yunupingu has also won several awards. Most recently she was awarded the Wynne Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2017) and the 34th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award – Bark Painting Award, Museum and Art Gallery of Northern Territory, Darwin (2017). In 2008, she won the 25th National Aboriginal Art Award and was also selected for the prize in 2007 and 2009.

Yunupingu’s paintings are held in major public collections in Australia including National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin; Charles Darwin University, Darwin and Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa, Auckland.

This is Nyapanyapa Yunupingu’s eighth solo exhibition at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery