Damien Wright and Bonhula Yunupingu, Bala ga Lili (Studio Furniture 2018)

Bala Ga Lili (Two ways Learning) by Damien Wright and Bonhula Yunupingu Background: This artwork was generated through a cross-cultural collaboration between Melbourne furniture designer and maker, Damien Wright, and Yolngu man, Bonhula Yunupingu, member of the Gumatj clan of North East Arnhem Land. Damien and Bonhula first met in 2010 when Damien was invited by Gumatj elder, Galarrwuy Yunupigu, to establish a furniture craft studio in his homeland community of Gunyangara, situated near the mining town of Nhulunbuy. The workshop would utilise local timbers, routinely bulldozed and burnt in the process of bauxite mining, now being recovered by the Gumatj people for commercial advantage. In the European schema, Damien was Bonhula’s mentor, Bonhula Damien’s mentee. In the Yolngu kin relationship they established, Bonhula calls Damien bapa; Damien calls Bonhula gathu. Over the past seven years, they have taught each other many things — about creativity, skill and the art of living — in a process Yolngu call bala ga lili, or two-ways learning. In 2016, the pair sat down together in Damien’s Northcote studio, with a blank slate, to discuss a mutually constituted aesthetic and philosophical approach to the idea of ‘mining for art’. Artist statement: Bala Ga Lili is comprised of two components, expressing the shared experiences, techniques and sensibilities learned in the Gunyangara workshop, in the shadow of the bauxite refinery in North East Arnhem Land. Damien explains: “Our task was to find a sculptural and poetic language, as well as a combination of European joinery and Yolngu craft skills, to understand and impart our bond, forged across the expanse of a vast continent”. Through the red piece — Wunhakali/the Other Side — Bonhula tells a story. “Before the mining company came, Yolngu used that place as a wanga (home), they would build a hut from those trees, a yindi (big) hut, and go hunting from there, sometimes for guya (fish), sometimes for kangaroo, and then have ngatha (food) under the hut. If night was falling, they would sleep at that hut, maybe for one day or two. They would make gurrtha (fires) at night, and tell stories and share food, and you could see those fires from over the water. Then balanda mob (white people) came and did the mining. The trees came down, they dug into the earth, and sent it away to the other side of the world, and it came back as an aluminium can, as a beer can. This is the throwing man, this hunting man, and all the men, all the old people, who have gone there to catch food for their families, teaching the djamarrkuli (children) how to hunt, how to grow up right. It carries on, it goes round and round, through that circle of life.” Wunhakali takes Yolngu weapon-making techniques and applies them in an allegorical form. The timber is gadayka (Darwin stringybark), customarily used by Yolngu for weapon-making but, for the last forty years, regarded by Europeans as a waste product of mining. Traditionally, Yolngu men used animal sinew and resin binding to make gara (spears) and galpu (woomera, spear-throwers). Today, Yolngu use copper, harvested from house wiring and tempered by fire, as a substitute for sinew, and epoxy in place of beeswax and other plant-based natural resins; a simple but effective adaptive technology that is readily available, practical, decorative and resourceful. The form — the throwing man, the hunting man — is a powerful symbol of Yolngu action, agency and adaptation. Through the black piece — the Black Lighthouse/ Gurrnjan Djarratawun Wanga — Damien distills the words of one of his favourite songs, ‘Black Lighthouse’, by Australian country singer, Suzannah Espie: Everybody here loves you Everybody here loves you But nobody here loves you like I do So let me kiss you by the water before the boat heads south And I’ll love you like no other by the black lighthouse In literal terms, the black component represents the belching smokestacks of the aluminium refinery that you see when you look across the shimmering blue waters of Melville Bay. The refinery, with its 24-hour flood lights and growling industry, has been the aesthetic, social and economic backdrop to Gunyangara community since 1963. Some Yolngu refer to it as ‘the Monster’. Damien tells it like this: “A lighthouse symbolises the thing you seek in the dark, the way forward, that which guides you past the rocks and sees you safely home. But a black lighthouse is a contradiction in terms, it’s more difficult to access, hard to see. It’s not a big white light on the hill. It is confusing, counter-intuitive, and suggests that when European Australians, as colonists, are lost as a nation perhaps they need to look to mythologies other than development, growth and ‘progress’ as guiding lights for protection and prosperity.” The Black Lighthouse is made from Ancient Redgum, a 10,000 year-old petrified timber remnant from the last Ice Age. Itself a by-product of mining, excavated from a quarry in northern Victoria, Ancient Redgum is rare, finite, precious and unique on a global scale, a highly value-added resource. The piece is illuminated, symbolising fire (gurrtha) which is a constant and eternal part of everyday Yolngu life: still a practical and spiritual form of communion and communication. “The fire inside the piece also inverts the idea of a lighthouse: it doesn’t shine out, you peer in, drawn by curiosity, in an intimate gesture of longing and embrace”, Damien explains. How do the two components come together? Damien suggests: “Mining is a profoundly disruptive technology, and here we tell a disruptive narrative, ours is a disruptive relationship. What should look like a contradiction is a promise. What should keep you apart, in fact draws you together. This coming together — the collaborative process — is not easy, not seamless. It’s hard, but not negative, solid and real, a venture of the heart and soul”. “That’s it”, says Bonhula, “That’s the story behind it.” Interviews and text by Clare Wright, February 2017

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