MIRDIDINGKINGATHI JUWARNDA SALLY GABORI

Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori was a leader of the Lardil people in the Kaiadilt community in tropical far north Queensland. 

She had little exposure to fine art, or any comparable form of mark-making prior to taking up painting in 2005 at 81 years of age. Kaiadilt traditional tools, objects, and bodies were scarcely painted. Their only recorded art was a group of drawings made at the request of ethnologist Norman B Tindale during his expedition to Bentinck Island in 1960, now housed in the South Australian Museum.

Gabori painted meaningful sites, on Bentinck Island associated with tidal movement, seasonal change, and major climatic events such as drought and flood. She was mindful of the ebb and flow of life over all the seasons that made up her long life. As Djon Mundine eloquently put it. ‘Her works can be thought of as a memory walk, and a mapping of the physical and social memory of her long life on Bentinck Island’.

Djon Mundine, The Road to Bentinck Island: Sally Gabori, in The Corrigan Collection of Paintings by Sally Gabori, Macmillan Art Publishing, Melbourne, 2015