MELBOURNE.- Over the past five years, Yunupiŋu has become renowned for his etched metal sculptures and wall works which he makes by inscribing sacred designs and ancestral clan stories into found road signs and scrap metal freehand with a rotary drill.

For his third exhibition with Tolarno, Yunupiŋu has taken his practice in a striking new direction, etching directly into stringybark.

“The etched barks in this exhibition are unique,” explains Will Stubbs, long-time coordinator of Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Art Centre at Yirrkala. “Never before has a Yolŋu artist produced engraved barks like this.”

While unique, they are not without precedent.

“Wanapati was the first Yolŋu artist to etch into a larrakitj with a rotary drill,” says Stubbs. “An example of this was included in his first solo exhibition, Ṉilŋṉilŋ – The Spark, at Tolarno in 2023.”

“In this show he unveils another remarkable first,” he says. “The design is carried by the incisions made into the blackened surface alone.”

“This innovation is taking his output in a counterintuitive direction, towards the organic and away from the industrial,” he says.

Optically mesmerising, Yunupiŋu’s mark-making is underpinned by the Gumatj clan’s sacred design of gurtha (‘fire’ in Yolŋu), which is represented as a lattice-like pattern of repeating diamonds.

“But not just any fire,” notes Stubbs. “This is a fire of supernatural intensity. So powerful that it transforms the land it touched for all time. Its identity is etched into every atom of Gumatj land it spread to or was carried to.”

“Events like the recent Victorian and South Coast NSW fires help us understand the message carried in this ancient pattern,” he adds. “This design is sacred because it reveals a hidden secret.”

When cut into metal, Yunupiŋu’s designs dazzle and gleam in reflected light, yet etched sgraffito-like into the irregular and gnarled surface of blackened bark, the effect is warmer, softer and more tactile.

Yunupiŋu’s barks are undeniably innovative, yet they also represent a return to the oldest form of this art still in existence, says Stubbs. “This is in keeping with the cyclical view which Yolŋu hold of history and spiritual existence in general.”

“The earliest surviving bark paintings date from around 1850 and were collected near Boort in northern Victoria,” he says. “In fact, they were not technically paintings but etchings made into the surface of a piece of bark from a Eucalyptus tree, which had been blackened by smoke from a fire.”

Wanapati Yunupiŋu lives in the remote Gumatj homeland of Biranybirany, Northeast Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, a coastal community three hours by road from Yirrkala.

He is the son of deceased artist and spiritual leader Miniyawany Yunupiŋu from whom he inherited rich ceremonial instruction.

Works by Wanapati Yunupiŋu were included in the Art Gallery of NSW’s recent landmark exhibition, Yolŋu power: the art of Yirrkala, which ran from 21 June to 6 October 2025.