Morning Star Pole, Dhuwa, 2012

145 x 5 x 5 cm

Est. $2,000 – $3,000

Provenance: Framed Darwin, Anne Phelan (Director) Private Collection, Albany NY
Artwork story: The Morning Star ceremony is one of the most profound ceremonial expressions of the Yolngu people. It is linked to Venus, the morning star, and carries the weight of spiritual and cosmological law. Morning Star poles are created for use in sacred rites connected with death, mourning, and the soul’s journey, but they also hold a generative role, affirming the cycle of life, water, and renewal. This pole by Henry Gambika Nupurra Dhamarandji is constructed from a eucalyptus trunk and wrapped in ochre, kurrajong bark string, and feathers in alternating bands of earthy red, yellow, white, and black. The radiating feathers animate the form, embodying the passage of light, the shimmer of water, and the presence of ancestral beings. Dhamarandji, an important ceremonial artist from Elcho Island, here encapsulates a form of knowledge that is not simply visual but cosmological—materialising song, dance, and ancestral law in a single object.

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Sale 2 · Lot 35

Henry Gambika Nupurra Dhamarandji

b. 1932

145 x 5 x 5 cm

Est. $2,000 – $3,000

Provenance: Framed Darwin, Anne Phelan (Director) Private Collection, Albany NY
Artwork story: The Morning Star ceremony is one of the most profound ceremonial expressions of the Yolngu people. It is linked to Venus, the morning star, and carries the weight of spiritual and cosmological law. Morning Star poles are created for use in sacred rites connected with death, mourning, and the soul’s journey, but they also hold a generative role, affirming the cycle of life, water, and renewal. This pole by Henry Gambika Nupurra Dhamarandji is constructed from a eucalyptus trunk and wrapped in ochre, kurrajong bark string, and feathers in alternating bands of earthy red, yellow, white, and black. The radiating feathers animate the form, embodying the passage of light, the shimmer of water, and the presence of ancestral beings. Dhamarandji, an important ceremonial artist from Elcho Island, here encapsulates a form of knowledge that is not simply visual but cosmological—materialising song, dance, and ancestral law in a single object.