Marrnyula Munuŋgurr

Marrnyula began working for the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre whilst Steve Fox was the art co-ordinator in the 1980’s. She still resides at Yirrkala to work at Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka as an artist and senior printmaker in the Printspace. As well as being an art-worker she was brought up in one of the most artistically prolific camps in Yirrkala over this period. Both her mother Noŋgirrŋa and her father Djutjadjutja (dec. c.1935-1999) were constantly producing art with the help of their sons and daughters. She grew to assist her father (winner of the 1997 Best Bark painting prize National Aboriginal and Islander Art Award) with his sacred Djapu paintings as well as developing her own style of narrative naive paintings. All this whilst providing material support and moral leadership for her large family and being ‘mother’ to her brother’s three children.

In 2007 Marrnyula exhibited works at Annandale Gallery with her Mother Noŋgirrnga Marawili where they painted the Djapu clan design. In 2009 she was featured in a major survey of contemporary art ‘Making it New’ at the MCA in Sydney. She was a participant in the Djalkiri project with John Wolseley and Fiona Hall, which is still touring Australia. In 2013 she exhibited at Seva Frangos Gallery, Perth and at Marshall Arts, Adelaide in 2014. In early 2015 her groundbreaking installation of 252 barks at Gertrude Street Contemporary brought significant notice. Arranging a large number of small barks has remained a major theme in her works since. In 2019 an installation of over 200 barks was exhibited during the Tarnanthi Festival in Adelaide at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

In 2020 a work of hers which used painted representations of the flurry of small barks but which was actually only one large bark won Best Bark Prize at the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award