Two new exhibitions which share the sacred values, knowledge and connections of First Nations culture from the Top End while honouring a Yolŋu creative and academic are set to open this week.
Coordinated by the arts collective Miyarrka Media, the two exhibitions, MILKUM GA WALŊA: Pattern, camera, life and RAŊIPUY: The beach is breathing open at Charles Darwin University's (CDU) Art Gallery this week.
MILKUM GA WALŊA honours the legacy of artist and scholar Paul Gurrumuruwuy Wunungmurra (1955-2024).
The co-founder of Miyarrka Media, Mr Gurrumuruwuy was also Senior Research Fellow and Co-Director of the Centre for Creative Futures at CDU.
Miyarrka Media co-founder and Centre for Creative Futures co-director Professor Jennifer Deger, a close friend and colleague who supported this academic endeavour, said the exhibition showcased how the Yolŋu performer and researcher viewed traditional knowledge and ideas through an innovative lens.
"What is uniquely powerful about Mr Wunungmurra's approach to media is the way that he used the camera to share feelings and connections infused with ancestral patterns and meanings," Professor Deger said.
"As he liked to say, 'Through the camera you can see creation happening'. As he has taught me to appreciate, our work together has been all about collaborating with creation.
"This speaks to his character. He found this novel work invigorating. He self-identified as an anthropologist and artist and he was a force of renewal."
The exhibition includes film, images and commentary collected for Mr Wunungmurra's doctoral submission for a PhD by prior publication with CDU.
Professor Deger said the exhibition exemplified how First Nations knowledge can claim its own place in academic spaces, creating relationships between once very different and separate knowledge traditions.
"He [Mr Wunungmurra] could stand there in authority, speaking in own languages, but also produce work which circulated within traditional academic contexts and international public spaces," Professor Deger said.
The second exhibition, RAŊIPUY, is an audiovisual invitation into life from the sands and salt waters of Arnhem Land.
It is an ongoing project by Miyarrka Media which "reaches out to anyone who has a beach that lives inside them".
"Both exhibitions are a manifestation of his [Mr Wunungmurra] legacy," Professor Deger said.
"He spent his whole life as an intercultural broker. He travelled the world as a performer, and he was always interested in what it took to reach audiences without diminishing the differences of who we are.
"The collective we founded together, Miyarrka Media, has always been an intercultural and intergenerational commitment to Yolŋu social values, and his leadership and work resonate in both exhibitions."
MILKUM GA WALŊA and RAŊIPUY will be on display at the CDU Art Gallery at Danala | Education and Community Precinct from August 1 until October 11, 2025.
