Pink diptych
2015
- Medium
- earth pigments on Stringybark (Eucalyptus sp.)
- Measurements
- (a-b) 157.0 × 240.5 cm (overall)
- Place/s of Execution
- Yirrkala, Northern Territory
- Accession Number
- 2016.414.a-b
- Department
- First Nations Australia
- Credit Line
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by Judith and Leon Gorr and NGV Supporters of Indigenous Art, 2017
© Estate of Ms N. Yunupiŋu, courtesy of Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala - Gallery location
- Gallery 2
Ground Level, NGV Australia - About this work
-
A ceremonial woman and a battler who lived without material possessions, Nyapanyapa Yunupiŋu worked for almost a decade in the print medium before she began to work on small sheets of bark in 2007, painting amorphous images of indeterminate creatures that resembled geckos, turtles or crocodiles. This diptych in a palette of white, pinks and reds is incessantly marked and layered. It was an impromptu happening, because the right-hand side of Pink diptych I, created first, fitted beautifully with the left-hand edge of Pink diptych II, a work painted by the artist free of agency, when she was still working in tonalities of pink. In this diptych Nyapanyapa expresses her capacity to live in the moment, in the freeness of her mark making, with no calculation or even regard for the audience.