Gunybi Ganambarr wins WA Indigenous Art awards

"When Ganambarr was a young man, senior Yolngu artists recognised his ability and ensured he had the skills and knowledge to create the extraordinary bark paintings on show.

These wonderfully complex and technically brilliant barks sit alongside new works that exploit the potential of materials found around mining sites. Using the layered webs of lines fundamental to traditional Yolngu painting and the incising of lines that characterises Yolngu carving, he has reclaimed the insulation panels and rubber belts discarded by miners and transformed them into panels that combine traditional image-making with an enhanced sense of visual depth and tangible space.

Ganambarr's work epitomises the innovative and exploratory nature of contemporary Aboriginal arts practice and not surprisingly the judges awarded him the $50,000 main prize."

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Traditional themes mine new materials