The late Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori was a distinguished artist of international renown who left behind an immense cultural legacy. Cairns Art Gallery presents this focussed Sally Gabori exhibition to mark the Gallery’s thirty-year celebrations.
The exhibition Munnamurra Ngijinda Dulk: My Island Home features five highly significant works from QAGOMA. In addition, one major work is on loan from the Gold Coast’s Home of the Arts (HOTA), joining two paintings from Townsville Art Gallery and several important works from private collections.
A rare and newly released painting from the Sally Gabori estate will be included in the exhibition. The painting, entitled Dibirdibi Country (2009), has been recently aquired in the Cairns Art Gallery Collection through the Give and Commit Legacy Campaign, launched to mark the Cairns Art Gallery Foundation’s 25th anniversary.
Gabori was born before contact with non-Indigenous people, on Bentinck Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria, where the Kaiadilt people had continued to live a traditional way of life until the 1940s. This included fishing for mullet, harvesting fruit from the mangroves and releasing fresh water by digging in wetlands. In the 1940s, due to a significant weather event, Presbyterian missionaries oversaw the relocation of the small Bentinck population to Mornington Island, the largest island in the Wellesley Islands group.
The displacement Gabori and her small clan group experienced in leaving Bentinck Island led to a heart-sick yearning for Country. But the opportunity to take up painting at the art centre on Mornington Island meant Gabori began painting at the age of 80. She was immediately recognised for her instinctive artistic passion and drive.
During her late-life artistic career, Gabori translated the beloved features of her Country and the people who belonged to its landmarks, through her new visual language, with an exceptional flair for colour. In the exhibition title, the name, Mirdidingkingathu, means ‘born at Mirdidingki’ (Gabori’s Country on Bentinck Island), while Juwarnda is the name of hertotem, ‘dolphin’.
Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori was communicating with her land and family as she painted, and these intense personal connections are embodied in the works of this exhibition. It was her zeal to communicate her stories, knowledge and experiences through her painterly interpretations of Country that won Gabori great national and international acclaim.
Hero image:
Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori
b. c.1924–2015
Kaiadilt people
Dibirdibi Country 2009
synthetic polymer paint on linen
198 x 101 cm
Collection: Cairns Art Gallery, Queensland
© Sally Gabori/Copyright Agency, 2025
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