Gunybi Ganambarr: Gapu-Buḏap – Crossing the Water

In May this year, members of the D’Lan Contemporary team travelled to the community of Yirrkala in north-east Arnhem Land to meet with Yolŋu artist Gunybi Ganambarr. We’d come to one of Australia’s most dynamic art centres, Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka. For generations this dynamic powerhouse has been producing some of Australia’s most exciting groundbreaking artists. Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka’s ethos and success has always relied on a concentration of convergences – tradition and originality, function and beauty, education and art, culture and commodity, individual and collective, Yolŋu and everything else.

At the crest of Buku’s current wave of creativity is Gunybi Ganambarr, Buku’s most influential, radical and consistent champion of innovative Yolŋu art. Gunybi’s short stint as a house builder in his early twenties informs his contemporary practice, so too his cultural knowledge and the designs it manifests.

For nearly twenty years, his pioneering practice has stretched the parameters of art making in the region. Using ecologically opposed materials, Gunybi continues to confront the status quo. His standing as one of Australia’s most celebrated artists suggests he has prevailed, yet he remains driven to push the boundaries of his own making.

Gunybi Ganambarr is Yolŋu, from the Dhuwa moiety and the Ŋaymil clan, whose ontological and spiritual world is the foundation of his innovation. One can only be radical if one first understands the laws and systems of the ancestral age, to know where the ‘loopholes’ are and enter the new dawn. Gunybi’s extensive exhibition history and multiple accolades reflect not only his success but also his influence in contemporary art in north-east Arnhem land, where Yirrkala and Buku-Larrŋgay are undisputedly at the centre.

Buku’s reach and power in sharing Yolŋu knowledge and aesthetics through the numerous superstars it has nurtured within the canon of Australian art is remarkable. The major survey exhibition Madayin: Eight Decades of Bark Painting from Yirrkala, which is auspiciously showing at the Asia Society New York currently, delivers a thorough history of Yolŋu art practice and its pioneers. Curated and narrated by the Yolŋu people of north-east Arnhem Land, the exhibition provides the context in which to place the work of Gunybi Ganambarr, an artist who has grown out of this history, and has managed to drive ahead of his contemporaries and become an integral part of the future.

During our stay at Yirrkala, we met with Gunybi and cherished the brief but valuable moments that we were able to steal between his many cultural duties. At the time, he was also consumed in the creation of the exquisite Gundalmirri.

At the art centre, however, we found his myriad projects, all in various stages of completion, a valuable insight into the mind of this great artist. David Wickens, Buku’s coordinator, generously toured us through the stall of ideas and mediums – masterfully painted barks alongside unexpected materials such as rubber, foil insulation and various sheets of metal: twisted, rusted, etched, welded, hammered, bent and buffered.

The rich stores of the studio reflect the assessment of the acclaimed Australian art critic John McDonald: ‘Ganambarr is a master of thinking outside the square; for him, the first question is always: “Why not?” ’1