Ms Nyapanyapa Yunupingu

https://www.nomadart.com.au/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Nomad_7_SistersLR.pdf 

Seven Sisters celebrates the ancestry of the seven Yunupingu sisters. The sisters come from Nhulunbuy in North-east Arnhem Land. Their clan is Gumatj. Their father is Munggurrawuy Yunupingu (deceased), former tribal leader of the Gumatj people of Yirrkala. He was a politician, a singer, dancer and an artist. The Yunupingu family has also distinguished themselves as Yolngu leaders in politics and the arts. Other siblings include Australians of the Year Galarrwuy and Mandawuy Yunupingu. The aim of the Seven Sisters project was to produce seven individual artworks and one collaborative piece. Basil Hall Editions and the printmakers at Yirrkala - Annie Studd, Ruby Alderton, Dhapanbal Yunupingu and Barrata Marika co-ordinated the etching process and aided the sisters in developing their etching plates.

The works were made over one week in October 2011 when the seven sisters came to the courtyard at Buku-Larrnggay Mulka and worked every day.

On the morning of the first day the sisters came together and talked the story of the Seven Sisters, the constellation in the sky. This was filmed by The Mulka Project. The story has importance to the Yunupingu sisters as to all Yolngu. Using this as inspiration, the artists were each given a single square of acetate and paint and sent to different corners of the art centre. There they each individually - and without any influence from their sisters - painted a single star. The variation in the stars is at once both remarkable and lovely. The seven stars individually fashioned were combined for the collaborative plate.

The Djulpan story is about seven sisters who went out in their canoe called Djulpan. During September onwards, they go hunting and always come back with different types of food; turtles, fish, freshwater snakes, yams and berries. They can be seen in the sky of a night, seven stars that come out together. Known in English as the Pleiades, the stars come in season when the food and berries come out and travel through the sky during that month until the season is over. Yunupingu’s father told her about these seven sisters in a canoe, and the three brothers who came behind them, following them (Orion’s belt).

Text:  Buku-Larrnggay Mulka