We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art stands and recognise the creative contribution First Australians make to the art and culture of this country.
Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori / Kaiadilt people / Australia c.1924–2015 / Dibirdibi Country 2012 / Synthetic polymer paint on canvas / 121 x 484cm (installed) / Purchased 2014 with funds from Margaret Mittelheuser, AM, and Cathryn Mittelheuser, AM, through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Estate of Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori/Licensed by Copyright Agency, 2020.
Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally GaboriDibirdibi Country 2012
Not Currently on Display
The four panels that make up Dibirdibi Country 2012 focus on Sally Gabori’s favourite place and the land, songs and narratives associated with Dibirdibi (the Rock Cod ancestor) that Gabori maintained along with her husband, Dibirdibi (Pat Gabori), before moving to Mornington Island.
After over a decade of painting, Gabori’s works gradually became more restrained. The Gallery’s earlier large-scale work by Gabori, also titled Dibirdibi Country 2008, is a complex and vibrant painting; no less than six clashing and complementary colours intertwine to depict the rockwalled fish traps and sea country of Dibirdibi. Yet this work, painted just four years later, uses only two colours — a dark navy blue and white — to mark the physical, metaphysical and cultural landscape of the area’s saltpans. Gabori once stated, ‘This is the big saltpan on my husband’s country on Bentinck Island’.
Restraining her palette, Mrs Gabori surrenders nothing of her energy and power. Dibirdibi Country 2012 reflects the movement of wet-season tides and the shimmering of salt crystals in the sunlight. Her supreme knowledge, experiences, her sense of longing and loss, and her deep love of country all radiate from this incredibly beautiful painting.
Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori (c.1924–2015) came to painting at the age of 81. She was one of a handful of leading artists from Indigenous communities who worked in a bold personal style outside the established traditions of painting country. Others include Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Ginger Riley, Makinti Napanangka, Wakartu Cory Surprise and Nora Wompi.
Gabori is widely acclaimed for her vibrant use of colour depicting the intimate connections between the Kaiadilt people of Bentinck Island, their country and their history.
For her first 23 years, she moved between her family’s main homeland sites, living according to her unbroken ancestral culture. Then, in 1948, following devastating drought, storms and a near 4-metre tidal surge, she and her kin were moved to nearby Mornington Island.
Gabori returned to Bentinck Island whenever possible and maintained a strong connection to her Kaiadilt country through language, song and storytelling, all of which she incorporated into the act of painting.