Thundi, 2011

synthetic polymer paint on canvas

148 x 90 cm

Est. $25,000 – $35,000

Hammer $46,000

Provenance: Mornington Island Art Centre, Mornington Island, Qld, Cat No. 6691-L-SG-0311 Vivien Anderson Gallery, St Kilda, Vic Accompanied by certificates of authenticity from the Estate of Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori and Vivien Anderson Gallery
Exhibited: The Women's Show — 20th Anniversary, Vivien Anderson Gallery, St Kilda, Vic, 26 March – 26 April 2025
Artwork story: Thundi is the country of Gabori's father, Thunduyingathi Bijarrb, surrounding a river near the north-eastern tip of Bentinck Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria. The river mouth was an important fishing place for the Kaiadilt, and across her career Gabori consistently described her Thundi paintings as depictions of her father's country and its waters. She returned to Thundi more than any other subject across her eight years of painting, each canvas a different reckoning with the same country held in memory. The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art has noted that early Thundi paintings featured colourful flashes indicating the bluefish she loved to catch there, while later works became more austere. This 2011 canvas sits between those registers. A broad field of warm orange fills the upper half, into which a soft cloud of pale pink and white presses from the right, the two colours meeting in a passage of fluid, unhurried mark-making. Below, a deep magenta form occupies the centre of the canvas with complete authority, its lower edge dissolving into a wide ground of near-white. The paint is thick and physical, applied in the sweeping gestures that were entirely Gabori's own invention. The Kaiadilt people had no two-dimensional art tradition before 2005. When Gabori first picked up a brush at Mornington Island Arts and Crafts Centre she had nothing to draw on but the mental maps she had carried since her community was removed from Bentinck Island in 1948. In eight years she made more than two thousand works. A major retrospective, Dulka Warngiid — Land of All, opened at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art in May 2016 and travelled to the National Gallery of Victoria that September, tracing the full arc of her practice. She represented Australia at the Venice Biennale in 2013 and was honoured with a further retrospective at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris in 2022.

Catalogues162 of 257

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Sale 3 · Lot 14

Sally Gabori

c.1924 – 2015

Region: Cape York, Gulf & Far North Queensland
Community: Bentinck Island
Language group: Kayardild (Kaiadilt, Gayardilt)

Thundi, 2011

synthetic polymer paint on canvas

148 x 90 cm

Est. $25,000 – $35,000

Hammer $46,000

Provenance: Mornington Island Art Centre, Mornington Island, Qld, Cat No. 6691-L-SG-0311 Vivien Anderson Gallery, St Kilda, Vic Accompanied by certificates of authenticity from the Estate of Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori and Vivien Anderson Gallery
Exhibited: The Women's Show — 20th Anniversary, Vivien Anderson Gallery, St Kilda, Vic, 26 March – 26 April 2025
Artwork story: Thundi is the country of Gabori's father, Thunduyingathi Bijarrb, surrounding a river near the north-eastern tip of Bentinck Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria. The river mouth was an important fishing place for the Kaiadilt, and across her career Gabori consistently described her Thundi paintings as depictions of her father's country and its waters. She returned to Thundi more than any other subject across her eight years of painting, each canvas a different reckoning with the same country held in memory. The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art has noted that early Thundi paintings featured colourful flashes indicating the bluefish she loved to catch there, while later works became more austere. This 2011 canvas sits between those registers. A broad field of warm orange fills the upper half, into which a soft cloud of pale pink and white presses from the right, the two colours meeting in a passage of fluid, unhurried mark-making. Below, a deep magenta form occupies the centre of the canvas with complete authority, its lower edge dissolving into a wide ground of near-white. The paint is thick and physical, applied in the sweeping gestures that were entirely Gabori's own invention. The Kaiadilt people had no two-dimensional art tradition before 2005. When Gabori first picked up a brush at Mornington Island Arts and Crafts Centre she had nothing to draw on but the mental maps she had carried since her community was removed from Bentinck Island in 1948. In eight years she made more than two thousand works. A major retrospective, Dulka Warngiid — Land of All, opened at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art in May 2016 and travelled to the National Gallery of Victoria that September, tracing the full arc of her practice. She represented Australia at the Venice Biennale in 2013 and was honoured with a further retrospective at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris in 2022.