Sullivan+Strumpf is delighted to present an intricate body of work from Yolŋu artist Wayilkpa Maymuru.
A finalist in the 2024 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, and part of the esteemed Yirrkala-based Maymuru family of artists, Wayilkpa’s bark paintings explore her unique ancestral story.

This is proudly Wayilkpa’s second solo exhibition with Sullivan+Strumpf and marks her Naarm/ Melbourne debut. The exhibition is the result of a collaborative relationship with Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Arts Centre in the Northern Territories East Arnhem Region, now in its fourth year.

Wayilkpa Maymuru is a Yolŋu artist of the Maŋgalili clan and a member of Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre. Her work references the settlement of her homeland, Djarrakpi, by ancestral heroes, telling their story of death, rest and rebirth to the sky.

Wayilkpa’s artistic practice emerges from rich cultural and intellectual traditions. Her grandfather Narritjin Maymuru (1921-1981) is one of the most highly respected Yolŋu artists in history. Wayilkpa’s father is Banapana, Narritjin Maymuru’s second son. In the mid 1970’s Banapana helped his father establish an outstation on Maŋgalili land at Djarrakpi. Like his brothers and sisters, he was urged to watch his father painting after school and, taught by this great artist, developed into a fine artist himself. In 1978 he and his father spent three months as Visiting Artists at the Australian National University, Canberra.

Wayilkpa continues her family’s strong artistic legacy through her refined and meditative mark marking. She navigates the space between what is revealed and what is concealed in her contemporary interpretations of ancient Maŋgalili Clan narratives. Her recent works echo the Buwayak movement; a word that translates to ‘invisibility’. This movement, which emerged in the early 2000s, marked a move away from the figurative imagery dictated by earlier conventions.

Artists including Djambawa Marawili, Gunybi Ganambarr and Barayuwa Munuŋgurr, among others, explore this principle through subtle materiality, layered surfaces and restrained iconography. Crafting works that embody the unseen, rather than illustrate it. Now the future generations continue to push this practice and expand the movement.

Wayilkpa is part of this new wave revealing only what is appropriate while invoking the vast, invisible networks of ancestral presence that shape Yolŋu worldviews, forging deeper into the Australian contemporary art scene.

Wayilkpa Maymuru’s paintings have a complex symbolism; they represent ancestral stories in symbolic narratives. Similar elements occur across the paintings, with different but related meanings. Similarly to her father and grandfather, her art is a means to communicate ideas and knowledge to an external audience and a means of ensuring the continuity of ancestral law.

(Courtesy Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka)