For more than three decades the NGV has been acquiring works by women from Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala, in North- East Arnhem Land. Before the year 2000, women rarely painted on bark or made ḻarrakitj (painted hollow poles). On the opening weekend of Bark Ladies: Eleven Artists from Yirrkala exhibition curator Myles Russell-Cook speaks to some of these extraordinary paintings by Yolŋu women artists from Buku.

Speaker
Myles Russell-Cook is Senior Curator of Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). Myles is responsible for the National Gallery of Victoria’s collections of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, art from Oceania, as well as global First Nations. Much of Myles’s influence and inspiration comes from his maternal Aboriginal heritage in Western Victoria with connections into Tasmania and the Bass Strait Islands.