Gapu-Monuk Saltwater
Journey to Sea Country
This stunning exhibition presents up to 40 bark paintings which document the spiritual and legal basis of the Yolŋu people’s ownership of land in northeast Arnhem Land in Northern Australia.
Gapu-Monuk Saltwater: Journey to Sea Country, will be an acknowledgement of the significant and stunning story of the Yolŋu people of northeast Arnhem Land and their fight for recognition of Indigenous Sea Rights and the Blue Mud Bay Legal Case.
You will experience the history and cultures from three different sections.
Yirrkala Bark Paintings, also known as the Saltwater Collection .
Created by 47 Yolŋu artists who petitioned for sea rights by painting their Sea Countries onto bark and revealing sacred patterns or designs known as miny’tji, that were created by Ancestral Beings.
This stunning exhibition also includes Mokuy (spirit) carvings, Larrakitj (mortuary pole paintings on hollowed trees) and other traditional and contemporary works.
Many Communities Speaking With One Voice
Yolŋu artists from fifteen clans and eighteen homeland communities in east Arnhem Land created the sacred paintings in a response initiated by Madarrpa clan leader Djambawa Marawili in 1997, following his indignation at discovering illegal fishing on a sacred site in his clan estate.
The paintings were deemed the equivalent of title deeds to the sea rights of coastal waters. And almost a decade later, in July 2008, the High Court of Australia confirmed that traditional owners of the Blue Mud Bay region in North-East Arnhem Land, together with traditional owners of almost the entire Northern Territory coastline, have exclusive access rights to tidal waters overlying Aboriginal land.
Many Communities Speaking With One Voice, and Historic One-Offs.