Sally Gabori Night

With: Amanda Gabori Dibirdibi (Sally Gabori’s daughter), Tori Juwarnda Wilson Gabori and Narelle Gabori (Sally Gabori’s great-granddaughters), Nicholas Evans (linguist and anthropologist), Bruce Johnson McLean and Judith Ryan (aboriginal art specialists).

From July to November, 2022, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain presents the first major solo survey exhibition of Aboriginal artist Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori, outside Australia. Considered one of the greatest contemporary Australian artists, Sally Gabori began painting in 2005, around the age of eighty, and rapidly achieved national and international renown as an artist. In just a few short years of a rare creative intensity, and prior to her death in 2015, she developed a unique, vibrantly colorful body of work with no apparent ties to other aesthetic currents, particularly within contemporary Aboriginal painting.

To celebrate the opening of this exhibition of discovery, the Fondation Cartier invites Amanda Gabori Dibirdibi (Sally Gabori’s daughter), Tori Juwarda Wilson and Narelle Gabori (Sally Gabori’s great-granddaughters), Nicholas Evans (linguist and anthropologist), Bruce Johnson McLean and Judith Ryan (aboriginal art and Sally Gabori specialists, catalog authors). They will pay tribute to this artist, whose work continues to fascinate for its spontaneous, luminous, and profoundly original character, and will talk about the important cultural legacy she has left to her Kaiadilt community.

Biographies

Born in the small town of Gununa on Mornington Island in 1966, Amanda Gabori Dibirdibi is Sally Gabori’s youngest daughter. Attending the arts and crafts center from an early age, she was immediately introduced to and encouraged in painting by her mother, with whom she produced many works. Today, she continues to paint, positioning herself among the most recognized Kaiadilt artists.

Born in Mount Isa, Tori Juwarnda Wilson and Narelle Gabori live and work on Mornington Island. Aged 21 and 19, they are Sally Gabori’s great-granddaughters. Coming from the new Kaiadilt generation, they highlight the importance of the heritage of their culture and the history of their family. They also testify to the work of Sally Gabori and the hope that her success arouses for the younger generations.

Nicholas Evans is the Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (CoEDL), and of the Evolution of Cultural Diversity Initiative (ECDI) at the Australian National University in Canberra. His research focuses on the diversity of human language and what this can tell us about the nature of language, culture, deep history and the possibilities of the human mind. He has carried out fieldwork on several Indigenous languages of northern Australia and Papua New Guinea, including Bininj Gun-wok, Dalabon, Nen and Kayardilt, which he speaks fluently.

Bruce Johnson McLean is a member of the Wierdi Aboriginal community of the Birri Gubba Nation in the state of Queensland, north-eastern Australia. Since 2020, Bruce Johnson McLean has held the post of Barbara Jean Humphreys Assistant Director, First Nations Engagement at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) in Canberra. He was formerly Curator of Indigenous Australian Art at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) in Brisbane. In 2016, he curated the first major retrospective on the work of Sally Gabori, Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori: Dulka Warngiid – Land of All. In 2002, Bruce Johnson McLean received the NAIDOC award in the National Aboriginal Youth of the Year category, conferred to Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals during the annual national celebration of their history, culture and achievements.

Judith Ryan AM received a BA Honours in Fine Arts and English Literature at the University of Melbourne in 1970 and a Certificate in Education at Oxford University in 1972. In 1977, she began her art museum career at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne, where she was Senior Curator of Indigenous Art on her retirement in 2021. She contributed to planning, initiating and advancing the NGV’s Indigenous Art Collection from 1987 onwards. She has curated over 50 exhibitions, focused on increasing the visibility and accessibility of Indigenous art. She has brokered this unique expression of culture through a period of intense socio-political change.