Starry night in Jimbirla country
(2000)
- Medium
- earth pigments on canvas
- Measurements
- 90.1 × 121.0 cm
- Place/s of Execution
- Warmun, Western Australia
- Inscription
- inscribed in fibre-tipped pen on reverse u.r.: 3200 / P (/ over P) /
inscribed in fibre-tipped pen on reverse c.: WARMUN ART CENTRE / LENA NYADBI / WAC 346/00
inscribed (vertically) in fibre-tipped pen on reverse l.c.l.: WAC 346/00 - Accession Number
- DC16-2001
- Department
- Contemporary Art
- Credit Line
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased through the NGV Foundation with the assistance of the Joan Clemenger Endowment, Governor, 2001
© Lena Nyadbi/Licensed by Copyright Agency, Australia - Gallery location
- Not on display
- About this work
-
Working with an austere monochrome palette, matt texture and an emphatic repetition of simple designs over large surfaces, Nyadbi has formulated an ascetic visual language that conceptualises her innermost feeling for Country. The graphic vertical signs represent jimbirla (spearheads) made from razor-sharp stones that abound in Nyadbi’s father’s Jimbirla Country, which lies north of Warmun. Jimbirla were often produced for ritual exchange and hunting and were also used to make cicatrices on initiates’ bodies in ceremony. As a dramatic counterpoint to this formal gravitas, stars float and shimmer elusively in the smoky grey night sky, an allusion to the infinite beyond.
