Sally Gabori: When You Start Painting in Your 80s

Bruce: I first encountered Sally’s work through a local art gallery, Woolloongabba Art Gallery, when their curator called and said they had been working with a new artist and I had to go and view the works. They had assembled a gallery full of works made by Sally, an 81-year-old woman from the most remote part of the country, in just a few short months and held her first show in December that year. In 2006, I was the curator of an Emerging Indigenous Art Award at the Queensland Art Gallery where Sally was included with a group of her works. It is rare for anyone who has only picked up a paintbrush 13 months before to be exhibited at a major art museum, but Sally’s works were immediately compelling. In 2016 I was lucky enough to curate the first major museum retrospective of Sally’s work at QAGOMA.

Bruce: Sally Gabori’s painting is exceptional, created from her own mind rather than an Aboriginal tradition; unlike any other cultural group in Australia her Kaiadilt family had no tradition of making art or designs of any sort. Her paintings speak to the same themes and cultural concepts as most Aboriginal art, but also relate to more universal ideas of love, loss, longing and holding onto your own special place in the world. I believe it is the dichotomy of the abstractness and familiarity of Sally’s painting and her story that have captured the attention of so many around the world. Sally’s work has broadened the understanding of Aboriginal art, making her one of the most important artists of the contemporary Aboriginal art movements.