Miniyawany Yunupingu comes from an esteemed artistic family. His father was the famed Gumatj artist Bununggu Yunupingu, whose works from the late 1950s are represented in the Gallery’s collection. Miniyawany Yunupingu followed in his father’s footsteps acquiring a high level of cultural knowledge that he embedded in his art practice. He was also an accomplished dancer, traveling around Australia as a young man with Lance Bennett’s cultural dance group.
Yunupingu was not a prolific artist. However, he is recognised for his precise renditions of the Gumatj diamond design, which underline the figurative elements in this work, ‘Gumatj Larrakitj’ 1998. The work was painted by Yunupingu over several months between November 1997 and February 1998, with assistance from his wife Banbiyak Mununggurr. The work documents in complex details the journey of the ancestral Gumatj fire to the beaches of Biranybirany and beyond, to the river and its upper reaches where swamps are shrouded by paperbarks.