Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori

AUSTRALIAN, KAYARDILT, C. 1924-2015

Considered one of the greatest contemporary Australian artists of the past two decades, Sally Gabori began painting in 2005, around the age of eighty, and rapidly achieved national and international renown as an artist. In just a few short years of a rare creative intensity, and prior to her death in 2015, she developed a unique, vibrantly colorful body of work with no apparent ties to other aesthetic currents, particularly within contemporary Aboriginal painting. 

Gabori was born c. 1924 on Bentinck Island, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, off the coast of far-north Queensland, Australia. She was a Kaiadilt woman who spoke Kayardilt language. Her name, Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda, comes from the Kaiadilt tradition, which stipulates that everyone is named according to their place of birth and their totemic ancestor. Therefore, Mirdidingkingathi indicates that Sally Gabori was born at Mirdidingki, a small creek located in the south of Bentinck Island, and that her “totem animal” is juwarnda or dolphin.

Gabori’s paintings, although abstract in appearance, are as much topographical references as they are stories with a deep signification for her, her family, and her people. They are a celebration of different places on her native island, some of which Gabori and members of her family linked to these places through their names, did not visit for almost forty years. The places she paints are also associated with the political struggle for the recognition of Kaiadilt land rights.

After her death in 2015, the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, and then the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne presented a large retrospective of her work in 2016 and 2017. Her paintings are now featured in some of Australia’s most important public collections. Gabori’s immense legacy was honoured in the major retrospective exhibition Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori: Dulka Warngiid – Land of All at the Queensland Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia. A solo exhibtion of Gabori’s work was celebrated at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art Contemporain in Paris, France in 2021.

SELECTED COLLECTIONS
Australia Artbank
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Australia Art Gallery of South Australia
Australia Art Gallery of Western Australia
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
Australia Foundation Burkhardt-Felder, Motiers, Switzerland
Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Utrecht, Netherlands
National Gallery of Australia
Australia National Gallery of Victoria
Queensland Art Gallery
University of Queensland Art Museum