‘We were looking for what we were going to do. I grabbed a spear and pointed straight, aiming the spear and then, boom.. The idea just came out. That’s me, a portrait. It’s the story for me and Bapa (Damien). Pointing, aiming to the future, the road to the future.’
Bonhula Yunupingu, interviewed April 2022
‘We don’t touch. Those two men can stand in relation to each other anyway you want. They are two men moving through life together, with heritage, with culture, with power. Always trying to work it out, always trying to balance it. But, we have to give each other space. The space is the respect.’
‘Where does the white man balance against this beautiful animation and fluidity in the Yolŋu man? Well, he is the ridged, rectilinear tower. He is this box. But of course, that’s an illusion the box. I didn’t want to do an impenetrable box, I wanted to talk about how that man is vulnerable, how that man is losing his colonial power, whether he likes it or not, that’s going.’
Damien Wright, interviewed April 2022
Damien Wright (b.1969) and Bonhula Yunupingu (b.1978) have been working together since 2010, both are craftsmen who look deeper than simply designing and making furniture. Bonhula is a Yolŋu man of the Gumatj clan who met Damien, a Melbourne-based craftsman, after he was invited to help set up a furniture studio to use the Gadayka (Stringy Bark) that was being felled and discarded by the local bauxite mining company. They consider the material’s memory, tracing how it came into their hands, what its purpose and use was and what it will become.
The petrified Red Gum that Damien sourced from Victoria holds the light, the Gurtha (fire), which only allows the light to seep through cracks. The Red Gum is 10,000 years old; an enduring witness fossilised in a capsule of time, now the holder of light. The light is a clue tracing back to the many peoples who would camp along the beach lighting fires at night to socialise and gather. The copper wire to bind the pieces to support the joinery is a nod to joinery practices of Yolŋu peoples, who typically use kangaroo sinew and resin to bind tools. The Stringy Bark eucalypts are the trees that would be worked into shelters and weapons for hunting. The sculptural form pays homage to those hunters. The Stringy Bark, the copper and the petrified Red Gum are materials sourced from mining and building industry, as ‘waste’. The materials are mnemonics for Damien and Bonhula unlocking the cultural, social and industrial lives they lived.
This is the first work that they created together, they are a pair of portraits. The man throwing the spear is a portrait of Bonhula and the black lighthouse is representative of Damien. The solid form of a man throwing a spear can be in proximity to, but not touch, the ridged and fragile black lighthouse. The respect between the two men is represented in the space they give each other. They play with the lighthouse and its social and historical metaphors as a sign of danger, a warning to Westerners. For Yolŋu the lighthouse is a fire on the shores. A fire is a welcome sight, a signifier of a safe place for a fisherman to stay if he offers some of his days catch for a safe warm place to rest. This work highlights the initial stage of their relationship which was about respecting each other's difference, their roles in their personal and shared worlds. This work is a commitment to let one another take up space, to give space.
By directly speaking to the materials memory and its present intent they create sculptural poetry. They describe their relationships as “an ongoing circular cross cultural collaborative project” and they create pieces that resonate beyond decorative design, product design and engineering and into consciously creating social futures. The partnering of the makers creates a dialogue that embodies Bonhula’s methodology as a Yolŋu custodian and Damien’s expertise as a craftsman and expert in European joinery. Each material used is a sentence that features in a much longer story. Each sculpture these two men create together becomes library of collective knowledge.
Production
The intent of Damien and Bonhula’s creations are based in their interpersonal relationship and intertwined in their creative process. They utilise skills from one another’s cultures, European joinery, Yolŋu methodology and teach one another. This collaborative process has been one that they have worked on since 2010 after Damien was invited by Gumatj Elder Galarrwuy Yunupingu to help them to establish a local workshop to recycle the stringy bark that is felled during the mining process and discarded as waste. The intent of the creators is to respect the materials and to have a two-way learning exchange between the individuals that models conscious circular ways of living. There is no end or beginning their works are markers of time and markers of their collaborative relationship.
History
The historical narratives of these objects are evident through each individual material. The materials act as clues to deeper stories. Bonhula brings the stories of place, the place the Gadayka (Stringy Bark) grows and where he and Damien forged their relationship. He brings the story of the Stringy Bark’s ancestors and the relationship they have with Yolŋu people. These are the trees that would used for making shelters and weapons for hunting. The sculptural form pays homage to those hunters in the design. The petrified Red Gum that Damien sourced from Victoria holds the light, the gurtha (fire), which only allows the light to seep through cracks. That Red Gum is 10,000 years old; an enduring witness fossilised in a capsule of time, now the holder of light. The light is a clue, tracing back to the many peoples who would camp along the beach, lighting fires at night to socialise and gather. The copper wire used to bind the pieces to support the joinery is a nod to joinery practices of Yolngu peoples, who typically use kangaroo sinew and resin to bind tools. The Stringy Bark, the copper and the petrified Red Gum are materials sourced from mining and building industry, as ‘waste’. Through their collaborative process the history of the materials are honoured and their future function is imbued with their stories and the relationship held between the makers and the materials.
