Damien Wright was born in 1969 in Redcliffe, Queensland.
Bonhula Yunupingu was born in 1978 into the Gumatj family Yunupingu moiety yirritja totem crocodile ‘baru’.
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 Yolngu kin relationship they established, Yunupingu calls Wright bapa; Wright calls Yunupingu gathu. In the European schema, Wright was Yunupingu's mentor, Yunupingu Wright's mentee. Over the past fourteen years, they have taught each other many things - about creativity, skill and the art of living - in a process Yolngu call bala ga lili, or two-ways learning.
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’. Since then Wright and Yunupingu have partnered in a successful relationship which has resulted in their work being collected by MAAS, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney Australia; Winner of the Excellence Award, Victorian Craft and exhibited in museums and art fairs globally.
