While her blue artworks can fetch up to $60,000, the prolific Yolŋu artist is known for giving them away – with Julia Gillard at the top of her gift list
The prolific Yolŋu artist Dhambit Munuŋgurr has been waiting a long time to get Julia Gillard’s attention.
On 10 July 2013 Australia’s first female prime minister was scheduled to visit the north-east Arnhem Land community of Yirrkala to mark the 50th anniversary of the signing of the bark petitions, which sparked the Indigenous land rights movement. Munuŋgurr had prepared a bark painting in Gillard’s honour, hoping to present it to her. But a fortnight before the visit Gillard was toppled in a Labor leadership spill and the victor, Kevin Rudd, made the journey to Yirrkala instead. Munuŋgurr is too polite to publicly take sides but, suffice to say, the painting remains in her bedroom on Gunyaŋara, the tiny island in the Arafura Sea some 25 minutes’ journey away.
Dhambit Munuŋgurr travels to the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre in Yirrkala three times a week to paint large bark canvases and larrakitj (hollow log poles)
