Florescence – The Flowering

The next large-scale presentation at Michael Reid Sydney will be a joint exhibition featuring two leading Yolŋu artists from Yirrkala, Northeast Arnhem Land, Gaypalani Wanambi and Djirrirra Wunuŋmurra Yukuwa. Titled Florescence: The Flowering and launching in early June alongside the opening of the historic Art Gallery of New South Wales exhibition Yolŋu Power, which charts the world-significant artistic flowering that has emerged over the last century from Yirrkala, this very special presentation pairs extraordinary, innovative and magnificent new bodies of work by two major talents at the forefront of an exciting new generation of Yolŋu artists.

Florescence arrives at a moment of burgeoning critical attention and institutional recognition for artists from the Yirrkala community on the international stage. In addition to Yolŋu Power and other recent programs such as Miwatj Yolŋu – Sunrise People at Bundanon and the NGV’s Bark Salon, it coincides with the grand reopening of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s spectacularly reimagined Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, as well as the sweeping, monumental survey 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art at The Ian Potter Centre, with its accompanying tome edited by Professor Marcia Langton AO and Judith Ryan AM.

Working at the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Art Centre in Yirrkala, both Wanambi and Wunuŋmurra share the essence of their Country through their creative practices. Their designs are structured in ways akin to a flower that grows from the body of a plant; highly decorative but also expressive of identities embedded in place. Each land flowers in a slightly different way.

Wanambi is a Dhuwa woman of the Marrakulu clan whose Country is linked to the songline of Wuyal, the ancestral honey hunter who chops down hollow trees filled with sweet honey. The artist depicts the blossom of the eucalypt Gaḏayka, which fuels the bees in the early dry season.

Wunuŋmurra is from the opposite moiety of the Yirritja. She is a Dhaḻwaŋu artist who depicts the flower of the yam Yukuwa, which symbolises a treeless plain that is the ceremony ground of the spirits. These spirits gather to celebrate their interconnectedness, just as the vines of the Yukuwa plant originate from one source. Wunuŋmurra also shows the fish trap Buyku, which is set when the Gaḏitjirri (Speargrass) flowers.

Both Wunuŋmurra and Wanambi have extended their practice beyond classical, sacred designs to grow into their own informal interpretation of their homeland. The land has blossomed in a new way. All work from the artists’ forthcoming exhibition, Florescence: The Flowering, can be acquired by request before our opening celebration on Thursday, 12 June.

For previews and priority access to works from Florescence: The Flowering, please email dean@michaelreid.com.au.