Sally Gabori

Sally Gabori began her relatively short but spectacular art career in 2005. She had never held a paintbrush or learnt anything of contemporary art when she was given art materials at the age of 81 at her aged care home on Mornington Island. By the time of her death in 2015, she had developed her own painterly language that had taken the Aiustralian art world by storm. Gabori grew up living a traditional lifestyle on the low-lying Bentinck Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Due to environmental threats (such as drought and flooding) Presbyterian missionaries evacuated the population in 1948, somewhat pleased for an excuse to convert the local people to Christianity. Cultural practices (including polygamy) were outlawed and the Kaiadilt language fell into disuse. For years the birthrate fell as the island people mourned their loss, while the remained somewhat removed from the Lardil people of Mornington Island. Sally was one of the last remaining speakers of her Kaiadilt language and as such, a custodian of their traditional culture, its stories and ceremony. As she got older, she felt a great need and desire to share her memories and experiences. Throughout her life, Sally maintained her traditional crafts of weaving mats and bags from grass or hand-rolled hibiscus bark. The Kaiadilt culture had no pictorial tradition and when it came to painting, it was the smearing and daubing of ceremonial body painting that seemed to be the primary influence. Her strong and energetic brushstrokes imparted a sensual quality as she recreated the beloved landscape of her early island life, feeling her way across the canvas with the sensitivity that only intimate familiarity with the natural environment bestows. Large areas of colour were painted over and into each other while still wet, mixing vibrant yellows, blues and reds, or in her more brooding works, blacks and misty greys. Her loaded brush attested to the outpouring of emotion and ideas as place and memory were woven into uninhibited fields of colour and shape. Seven months after beginning to paint, Sally was attending her own sell-out show at a Brisbane gallery. This star-like prominence continued unabated throughout the remainder of her life. Her work was soon appearing in major exhibitions and she was chosen to represent Australia’s visual culture at the Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art during the G20 world leaders summit in 2014. Kaiadilt culture had emerged from seclusion, its stories and country entering the mainstream. While theorists of abstraction tend to talk of emotional expression, Gabori was always picturing stories. Her enthusiasm to sing and relate her heritage gave an integrity to her work. The responce was rapturous. Audiences could feel the sun, sea and mists converging alongside island flora and fauna. The extensive stonewalls that encircle the island; fish traps, built to provide a steady food source. Shellfish and crabs; gathered there and the incoming tides bring fish. Egg-laying turtles and dugongs leaving their tracks as they fed in the shallows on abundant sea grass. All have associated stories, both historical and legendary. Enjoying the rewards of her success meant that Sally was able to start visiting Bentinck Island again, accompanied by her late husband and relatives. Small communities had been re-established there during the 1980s as part of the return to country movement. Her tribal name Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda indicates the part of the island where she was born (Mirdidingki, the southern side) and her totem, the dolphin (Juwarnda), refers to an event that occurred at the time of her birth. Her husband Pat Gabori was a warrior chief who won her in battle. She was one of four wives who mothered many children (11 of her own) and the support and sociability that this engendered continued up into her painting days. She soon inspired others to take up the brush, chattering and singing as they exchanged stories from the past. In her later works she used a thinner, milky solution, over-painting the brilliant colours beneath, as if the remembered landscape shimmered through a soft summer haze. Her amazing legacy throws stereotypical notions of contemporary Indigenous painting into question and infects the genre with exciting new perspectives in both theory and practice.