Songspirals: Yolŋu women sharing & nourishing milkarri

This exhibition includes print-making, weaving, and audiovisual works, connected to the Yolŋu kinship system, Gurrutu, and five songspirals: Wuymirri (whale), Wukun (gathering of the clouds), Guwak (messenger bird), Wititj (rainbow serpent) and Goŋ-Gurtha (Fire keeper). The exhibition is a manifestation of the intergenerational continuation and nourishment of songspirals and milkarri by Yolŋu women in North East Arnhem Land.

Songspirals are often called songlines or song cycles. We call them songspirals as they spiral out and spiral in, they go up and down, round and round, forever. Yolŋu women from North East Arnhem Land in northern Australia, cry the songspirals, we keen the songspirals - this is what we call milkarri. Only women keen milkarri. Milkarri is an ancient song, an ancient poem, a map, a ceremony and a guide, but it is more than all this too.

Milkarri is a very powerful thing in Yolŋu life. The knowledge and stories in this exhibition are an invitation to share in some of what we, Yolŋu people, know and do as we live songspirals today.

“We are still doing milkarri of the songspirals ... The sound communicates who we are and where our homeland is ... The place and the song are one. It’s soothing and healing ... Women cry milkarri to guide our loved ones, living and dead ... We cry milkarri in grief, bittersweet, with love, to heal” - (xvii, 84, 255) Gay’wu Group of Women, Songspirals: sharing women’s wisdom of Country through Songlines.

^{IMAGE (ABOVE): Ms D Yunipingu Lamamirri Whale 13B 2016 Etching 1/20 Mother of the Rirratjiŋu nation.}

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