Dibirdibi Country

Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori, Kaiadilt people, Australia b.c.1924 / Dibirdibi Country 2012 / Synthetic polymer paint on linen / Purchased with funds from Margaret Mittelheuser, AM, and Cathryn Mittelheuser, AM, through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / © Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda/Copyright Agency

Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori, Kaiadilt people, Australia b.c.1924 / Dibirdibi Country 2012 / Synthetic polymer paint on linen / Purchased with funds from Margaret Mittelheuser, AM, and Cathryn Mittelheuser, AM, through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / © Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda/Copyright Agency / View full image

Aboriginal artist Sally Gabori (c.1924–2015) is one of the most important Australian painters and her work Dibirdibi Country 2012 is among the best of her works. Here, we touch on some of the history behind the artist and her radiant painting.

Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori was born around 1924 on the south side of Bentinck Island, of the South Wellesley Island Group in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Her Kaiadilt language name, Mirdidingkingathi, means ‘born at Mirdidingki’, and Juwarnda is her totem, the dolphin. Bentinck, inhabited for thousands of years by the Kaiadilt, was officially ‘discovered’ in 1623 by Jan Carstensz, commander of the ship Pera, and it was also one of the first parts of the Gulf of Carpentaria surveyed in detail by the explorer Matthew Flinders in 1802. After Flinders’s brief encounter, the Kaiadilt had relatively little contact with the settler society over the following 145 years.

ARTWORK STORIES: Delve into QAGOMA’s Collection artwork highlights for a rich exploration of the work and its creator

In the late 1940s, however, severe drought and high tides affected low-lying Bentinck Island and soon the entire population was moved to Mornington Island. As a minority in the Lardil community on Mornington Island, the Kaiadilt were often excluded or forgotten during the various painting and art movements that occurred there. Gabori’s tenacity and seniority established a space for the women of her tiny community to paint and gave them a voice through art.

Sally Gabori began painting as an octogenarian in 2005 at Mornington Island Art Centre. Her immediate love of paint — the full spectrum of colour offered to her — triggered an outpouring of energy; her confident paintings of country quickly gaining her the recognition of the art world. While her works were and still are largely seen as abstraction, they are highly idiosyncratic mind mapped landscapes, in which layers of understanding of her place are loosely transcribed. A closer look reveals how country, colour and the mind’s eye combine to impart an intimate sense of who Sally Gabori is and where she is from.

ARTISTS & ARTWORKS: Explore the QAGOMA Collection

Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori ‘Dibirdibi Country’ 2012

Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori, Kaiadilt people, Australia b.c.1924 / Dibirdibi Country 2012 / Synthetic polymer paint on linen / Four panels: 121 x 121cm (each); 121 x 484cm (installed) / Purchased with funds from Margaret Mittelheuser, AM, and Cathryn Mittelheuser, AM, through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda/Copyright Agency

Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori, Kaiadilt people, Australia b.c.1924 / Dibirdibi Country 2012 / Synthetic polymer paint on linen / Four panels: 121 x 121cm (each); 121 x 484cm (installed) / Purchased with funds from Margaret Mittelheuser, AM, and Cathryn Mittelheuser, AM, through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda/Copyright Agency / View full image

The focus of this work is Gabori’s favourite location, and the land, songs and narratives associated with Dibirdibi (the Rock Cod ancestor) that Gabori maintained along with her husband Dibirdibi (Pat Gabori), before moving to Mornington Island. Now a nonagenarian, Gabori’s paintings have gradually become more restrained. The Gallery’s earlier large-scale work by Gabori, Dibirdibi Country 2008, is a complex and vibrant painting; no less than six clashing and complementary colours intertwine to depict the rockwalled fish traps and sea country of Dibirdibi. Yet this work, painted just four years later, uses only two colours — a dark navy blue and white — to mark the physical, metaphysical and cultural landscape of the area’s saltpans. Gabori has stated, ‘This is the big saltpan on my husband’s country on Bentinck Island’.

Restraining her palette, Sally Gabori surrenders nothing of her energy and power. Her supreme knowledge, experiences, her sense of longing and loss, and her deep love of country all radiate from this incredibly beautiful painting.

Bruce Johnson McLean is former Curator, Indigenous Australian Art, QAGOMA


The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land upon which the Gallery stands in Brisbane. We pay respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elders past and present and, in the spirit of reconciliation, acknowledge the immense creative contribution Indigenous people make to the art and culture of this country. It is customary in many Indigenous communities not to mention the name of the deceased. All such mentions and photographs on the QAGOMA Blog are with permission, however, care and discretion should be exercised.

Related Stories

  •
    Read •

    In Daniel Boyd’s works, Australian history is re-told

    Daniel Boyd, born in Cairns, Queensland, is an artist of both Aboriginal and South Sea Islander heritage, whose works often deal with the complexity of the history of South Sea Islander labour in Queensland and its legacy. This is one of our state’s most important historical narratives, with some 62 000 labourers brought to Queensland in the early 1860s, initially as slaves, then as low-paid contract workers — particularly on cotton, banana and sugar farms. The heat and humidity of the north, accompanied by the scarcity of white labour and its much higher cost, meant that South Sea Islander and Aboriginal labourers worked under slavery-like conditions to fulfil the requirements of the rapidly expanding agricultural frontier. Watch | Director Chris Saines CNZM discuss ‘Untitled (HNDFWMIAFN)’ Daniel Boyd with ‘Untitled (HNDFWMIAFN)’ 2017 As the white towns and settlements grew, the presence of thousands of these black labourers was perceived as menacing by the north’s white citizens, and with growth in the white labour force and the push of newly formed unions, legislation was drafted to forcibly remove the South Sea Islanders from Queensland. In 1901, the White Australia Policy was enacted, and over the following decade, a program of mandatory, and often arbitrary, repatriation took place. Following the program, very few South Sea Islanders remained, mostly those who had married a local. Boyd’s paintings, reworked from historical source imagery, are covered in transparent, resin-like dots that become a lens through which the world is viewed and distorted — a comment on information known and unknown, and the processes that have rendered certain histories knowable and unknowable. His compositions leave large parts of histories metaphorically erased, and only small pieces of knowledge — in the form of tiny dots — are retained for the viewer to interpret and reconstruct, forming an imperfect ‘whole’. Boyd’s works are a visual representation of the destruction of the histories and cultures of Indigenous Australian and South Sea Islander peoples throughout colonial history. ‘Untitled (HNDFWMIAFN)’ In this commission, Boyd has recreated a scene from the Hambledon plantation, a sugar farm not far from Cairns. In 1888, the Hambledon had 900 acres of planted sugar cane, and employed 32 white, 29 Chinese, 6 Javanese, and 176 South Sea Islander workers. The land clearing was done first by Chinese labourers, and the field work was continued by the Islanders. For their efforts, the Chinese and Javanese were paid £1/5 per week. White workers received up to £4 per week; the Islanders, just £6/5 per year. Watch | Daniel Boyd introduces ‘Untitled (HNDFWMIAFN)’ Boyd has reworked an historical photograph in which a white overseer stands among the black workers in a cane field. The artist has said of the image that ‘the tension is palpable’ as the white owner or overseer poses near centre field, while the black labourers stand with their tools, engaged in field work. The story of the Hambledon plantation deeply affects many South Sea Islander families in the north. Today, the area of the plantation spans the Cairns suburb of Edmonton, and on the original site sits an amusement park named ‘Sugarworld’. Originally conceived by sugar industry giants CSR, but now owned by the Cairns City Council, the park houses waterslides, swimming pools and bars. The influence of Australian history on Aboriginal and South Sea Islander people is evident, in Boyd’s painting, a white plantation overseer watches, hands on hips, over Islander labourers whose hands are likewise occupied by tools and implements. In a space that tells Australian histories through art, this work — which comments on our often brutal past — allows us all to celebrate and acknowledge the significant contribution of Aboriginal and South Sea Islander peoples in the making of this country. Bruce Johnson McLean is former Curator, Indigenous Australian Art, QAGOMA Through the QAGOMA Foundation, this commission has been supported by an anonymous donor, without whom this history might have remained untold. This commission can be viewed as part of the Gallery’s Australian art display in the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Galleries, Queensland Art Gallery. The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land upon which the Gallery stands in Brisbane. We pay respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elders past and present and, in the spirit of reconciliation, acknowledge the immense creative contribution Indigenous people make to the art and culture of this country. It is customary in many Indigenous communities not to mention the name of the deceased. All such mentions and photographs on the QAGOMA Blog are with permission, however, care and discretion should be exercised.
  •
    Read •

    Visit Makarrki, Sally Gabori’s brother’s country

    Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori lived an entirely traditional life for her first 23 years, moving between her family’s main homeland sites and living according to an unbroken ancestral culture. In 1948, following devastating drought, storms and a near four-metre tidal surge, she and her kin were moved to nearby Mornington Island. In our series on her work we look at her brother’s country. DELVE DEEPER: The life and art of Sally Gabori Sally Gabori ‘Makarrki – King Alfred’s Country’ In 2007, inspired by a return to Country, Sally led a monumental effort to map many important Kaiadilt places through three epic six metre long collaborative paintings alongside her sisters and nieces — Thunduyingathi Bijarrb May Moodoonuthi, Wirrngajingathi Bijarrb Kurdalalngk Dawn Naranatjil, Kuruwarriyingathi Bijarrb Kurdalalngk Paula Paul, Rayarriwarrtharrbayingathi Mingungurra Amy Loogatha, Birrmuyingathi Maali Netta Loogatha and Warthadangathi Bijarrba Ethel Thomas — all of whom were born on Bentinck before the exodus. The incredibly exuberant works focused on three subjects: Dulka Warngiid and mapping Bentinck Island through their dulkiiwatha (the places they were born and the ties that bind them to those places); Sweers Island, the second largest of the islands of their Kaiadilt Country, including the final resting place of Dibirdibi, the Rock Cod Ancestor; and Makarrki (King Alfred’s Country), mapping the place of King Alfred, a key figure in all of the artists’ lives. Makarrki is a very special place and has a big river that runs through it. This is where dugong and turtles come on a high tide making it easy for the men to catch them. Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori The head of the Makarrki River, at the heart of the northern shore of Bentinck Island, was an important hunting ground and Sally often recalled the exploits of her brother (or brother-in-law) Tarurukingathi Kulkitji (Buddy) wrestling with dugongs here. It was also the country of her older brother, Makarrkingathi Dingkarringathi Thuwathu Bijarrb (King Alfred). King Alfred was the leader of the main Kaiadilt clan in the years prior to their removal to Mornington Island. He is remembered by his family as a strong warrior and leader. Visit Sally Gabori’s world to understand her deep connection to Bentinck Island. Explore Sally Gabori’s Bentinck Island online interactive In the late 1940s a period of great drought caused tremendous friction within Kaiadilt society and conflict was common. In a fateful turn of events King Alfred took the life of Buddy, before Buddy’s brother, Kabararjingathi Bulthuku Pat Gabori killed the King and took his younger sister, Sally, as his wife. Sally’s paintings of this place are layered with complex memories and intense emotions. Sally and her sisters and nieces who collaborated on Makarrki – King Alfred’s Country 2008 (illustrated) have said: We have painted one of the most important places on Bentinck Island. This is where King Alfred was born. This is his country. King Alfred was Sally’s big brother…. He was famous as a strong warrior and leader; he was feared by other tribes. This place is special to all seven of us. We all have close connection to this country. That is why we picked it as painting for us to do together. The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Gallery stands in Brisbane. We pay respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders past and present and, in the spirit of reconciliation, acknowledge the immense creative contribution First Australians make to the art and culture of this country. It is customary in many Indigenous communities not to mention the name or reproduce photographs of the deceased. All such mentions and photographs on the QAGOMA Blog are with permission, however, care and discretion should be exercised.
Loading...