âBowled overâ as Nyapanyapa Yunupingu shoots to a higher firmament
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February 19, 2021 â 3.00pm
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Itâs rare to step into an exhibition and feel bowled over, but this was the case with Nyapanyapa Yunupinguâs exhibition,
The Little Things, at Roslyn Oxley9. Over the past decade Nyapanyapa has been a shooting star in the Indigenous art firmament but with this body of work she has moved onto another plane.
Itâs tempting to avoid the âIndigenousâ label because, taken purely as an collection of paintings, this show would be a stand-out in any gallery anywhere in the world. To call this work âIndigenous artâ might be seen as a way of putting it into a pigeonhole and thereby limiting its impact. Yet it could also be argued that for any discussion of Nyapanyapaâs art itâs vital to understand her identity
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Stephen Page, artistic director of Bangarra Dance Theatre, descendent of the Nunukul people and the Munaldjali clan of the Yugambeh Nation, and lifelong storyteller, is sitting on the headland at Barangaroo Reserve. Behind him, stage technicians are resetting Sydney Festival s open air stage, accompanied by the one TWO, one TWO of a soundcheck. In front of him, the harbour. Down here at Barangaroo you just sit here in the reserve by the water, and you look out at Goat Island, which is the island that Barangaroo and Bennelong were married on, Page says. You start to think about these public spaces and how we can reclaim them from a black perspective, allowing this consciousness for the future, to be fed to the next generation.