Damien Wright and Bonhula Yunupingu first met in 2010 when Wright was invited by Gumatj elder, Galarrwuy Yunupigu, to establish a furniture craft studio in his homeland community of Gunyangara, situated near the mining town of Nhulunbuy. The workshop would utilise local timbers, routinely bulldozed and burnt in the process of bauxite mining, now being recovered by the Gumatj people for commercial advantage.
In the European schema, Wright was Yunupingu's mentor, Yunupingu Wright's mentee. In the Yolngu kin relationship they established, Yunupingu calls Wright bapa; Wright calls Yunupingu gathu. Over the past seven years, they have taught each other many things - about creativity, skill and the art of living - in a process Yolngu callbala ga lili, or two-ways learning.
“It means we’re sending them back to the rivers of stars the milky way ..... to their spiritual land were we come from” - Bonhula Yunupingu.
In 2016, the pair sat down together in Wright's Northcote studio, with a blank slate, to discuss a mutually constituted aesthetic and philosophical approach to the idea of 'mining for art’.
Bonhula Yunupingu was born in 1978 into the Gumatj family Yunupingu moiety yirritja totem crocodile ‘baru’.
Damien Wright was born in 1969 in Redcliffe, Queensland.
