Nyapanyapa yunupingu biography for kids

Nyapanyapa is quite remarkable. She is perhaps the artist of the region most remote from the market she creates for. In this sense her art is really quire pure for it is without any consideration or desire to understand what happens beyond point of sale to her art centre. Through a building interest in her work these things may change. She is a widow, a wife of the late Djapu clan leaser Djiriny Mununggurr who died in 1977. Her early life was spent with her father Munggurrawuy Yunupingu a renowned artist and father of two Australians of the year (her brothers Galarrwuy and Mandawuy). She is a ceremonial woman and a battler without material possession. She is a classificatory sister to star artist Gulumbu and traveled once to Adelaide for the 2005 Festival with her kin for a critically acclaimed crying performance in honour of her deceased sister and senior artist Gaymala. She is small in stature and has been quite deaf for a long time. She was badly gored by a buffalo in the 1970s at Mutpi near Garrthalala which required her medical evacuation to Darwin which was more rare in those days. Although childless she has helped to raise many children and is almost always in the company of one of her sisters, usually Barrupu but sometimes Djakangu. She embodies uncomplaining humble persistence in her gentle subsistence lifestyle. Nyapanyapa's prints, especially her wacky and boldly coloured screen prints have been a hit for ten years. Lots of her editions have been in many exhibitions around the world. She started to paint on bark in 2007. Shortly after this she was exhibited in the Telstra Award and acceopted to hold her first solo exhibition at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in September 2008. She won the Wandjuk Marika Memorial 3Dimensional Prize in Telstra NATSIAA in 2008.

NYAPANYAPA YUNUPINGU
born 1945
lives and works in Yirrkala, NT
Larrakitj - hollow log pole  2019
ochre on Stringybark pole
249cm x 18cm
Acquired in 2019

Nyapanyapa Yunupingu is woman of small stature, but big on style.  Her art practice is quite independent of any bark-painting tradition within the Arnhem Land region. She is the daughter of the famous cultural leader Munggurrawuy Yunupingu and sister to Galarrwuy and Mandawuy, both Australians of the Year. She is a widow and was the wife of Djiriny Manunggur, a Djapu clan leader.  Franchesca Cubillo, in Undisclosed: 2nd National Indigenous Art Triennial, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2012.

Yirrkala-based painter Nyapanyapa Yunupingu is one of Australia's leading contemporary indigenous artists and enjoys an international reputation.   

Foremost among the works of Indigenous art in the Wesfarmers Collection are a selection of hollow log poles by artists of Maningrida and Yirrkala communities of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. Hollow log poles are traditionally known as Lorrkon in the community of Maningrida and Larrakitj in the community of Yirrkala.

Today, Lorrkon/Larrakitj are made as works of art - but their original purpose is founded in the mortuary traditions of Arnhem Land culture. The Lorrkon/Larrakitj coffin ceremony was the final ceremony in a sequence of mortuary rituals celebrated by the people of Arnhem Land. This ceremony involves the placing of the deceased’s bones into a hollow log decorated with painted clan designs and ceremonially placed into the ground where it remained until it slowly decayed over many years. The log is made from a termite-hollowed Stringybark tree (Eucalyptus tetradonta) and decorated with totemic emblems.

© Nyapanyapa Yunupingu, Buku-Larrngay Mulka Art Centre, Yirrkala  

I didn’t do trees, rocks or anything else at all. I didn’t put the rocks onto the paintings. I only made designs. – Nyapanyapa Yunupingu, Yirrkala, 2013

Nyapanyapa Yunupingu is perhaps the most influential artist working at Yirrkala today. Yunipingu, the daughter of prominent Yolngu artist Munggurrawuy Yunupingu, has distinguished herself by deliberately avoiding the clan stories and designs she has inherited to create works that explore aspects of the everyday and the process of making art itself.

Yunupingu’s paintings are truly unique, both in their subject matter and in their execution. Rather than depict ancestral stories she has inherited from her family, Yunupingu focuses on actual events from her own life and renders these in animated detail in her works.

The title of the ḻarrakitj (hollow log) Mayilimiriw 2010 can be directly translated as 'meaningless’. Yunupingu has used this title for a series of works she has produced since 2009 in which she jokingly counteracts the almost accepted convention of meaning being embedded within Yolngu art. Indeed this is the norm and Yunupingu is perhaps the first Yolngu artist to consciously eliminate this aspect from her work, allowing her to more freely focus on line, form and colour. However, in doing this she refers to the process of painting with natural pigments and the application of cross-hatching, which she renders in an energetic and rhythmic manner.

Yunupingu’s style of painting is in stark contrast to the highly geometric works being produced by most artists working through Yirrkala today and to the tightly composed paintings produced by artists in the past such as Yunupingu’s father, Munggu

Australian painter (1945–2021)

Nyapanyapa Yunupingu (1945 – 20 October 2021) was an Australian Yolngu painter and printmaker who lived and worked in the community at Yirrkala, Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory. Yunupingu created works of art that drastically diverge from the customs of the Yolngu people and made waves within the art world as a result. Due to this departure from tradition within her oeuvre, Yunupingu's work had varying receptions from within her community and the broader art world.

Early life

Yunupingu was a Yolŋu woman of the Gumatj clan and was born in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, in 1945. She was the daughter of Yolŋu artist and cultural leader Munggurrawuy Yunupingu (c.1905–1979), who was involved with the Yirrkala bark petitions. Yunupingu's father taught her how to paint, allowing her to watch as he created various works. In a conversation between Nyapanyapa Yunupingu and Will Stubbs, Yunupingu discussed how her father taught her to paint. He told her:

Daughter, see this, you will do this in the future.

Widowed, she was a wife of Djapu clan leader Djiriny Mununggurr, who died in 1977. She was the sister of brothers Galarrwuy Yunupingu and Mandawuy Yunupingu, and artist sisters Gulumbu Yunupingu, Barrupu Yunupingu, Nancy Gaymala Yunupingu, and Eunice Djerrkngu Yunupingu(c.1945–2022), among others.

Will Stubbs, Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Art Centre coordinator, said of Yunupingu and her art:

Nyapanyapa's best form of communication is her art. This is because she is deaf, doesn’t speak English, is otherwise not that verbal, doesn't belong to a culture which believes it is necessary to talk at length about art unless in regard to its sacred character, doesn't paint sacred art, does not have a sense of herself as an individual as distinct from her kinship group, does not have a sense of h