Considered one of the greatest contemporary Australian artists of the past two decades, Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori (c. 1924 - 2015) began painting in 2005, around the age of eighty and quickly gained national and international renown as an artist. In just a few short years of rare creative intensity, she developed a unique, vibrantly colorful body of work with no clear ties to other aesthetic currents, particularly within contemporary Aboriginal painting. Rather than dotted marks, Gabori used loose brushwork and bright color fields with hard-edged forms to express sensations of life and cultural memory in diaspora, and differed from other known forms of Aboriginal painting, which focused on storytelling. Most of Gabori’s works represent places in her homeland, the Bentinck Island, which was of deep personal significance to the artist. Through color and painterly gesture, she directly responds to her surroundings, depicting experiences and memories that reflect the rhythms and sensations of Kaiadilt Country. Gabori’s work has been acquired by all state and national galleries in Australia and international collections such as the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris (FR); Musée du quai Branly, Paris (FR); National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne (AU); Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville (USA); Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland (NZ); Foundation Burkhardt-Felder, Motiers (CH) and the ARTIZON Museum (formerly Bridgestone Museum of Art) in Tokyo (JP).
