Binygurr Wirrpanda | Sacred Sisters

Binygurr Wirrpanda’s artistic practice offers a lyrical expression of Dhuḏi Djapu miny’tji (sacred design) and ancestral knowledge. With a deft delicacy of hand and figurative expressiveness, Wirrpanda paints with natural earth pigments such as Gurrŋan (black earth pigments) and Gapan (white clay) onto stringybark and finely etches into reclaimed aluminium road signs. He reworks these surfaces into shimmering, evocative artworks that profoundly reinterpret sacred Dhudi Djapu poetic knowledge.

In Sacred Sisters, Wirrpanda focuses on significant ancestral places near his homeland, located inland on the east coast of Arnhem Land, facing Groote Eylandt. These include Dhuruputjpi, a place of billabongs blanketed with the leaves of the sacred darraŋgi (water plant), and the adjacent Yalata, a tidal landscape of freshwater springs where guḏurrku (brolgas) flock in their thousands, the skies whirling as they take flight. In ancestral times, the sacred Djang’kawu sisters, journeyed through the floodplains of Yalata, manifesting as the guḏurrku as they passed from spring to spring.

Sacred Sisters is Wirrpanda’s debut exhibition in Melbourne, presented by Alcaston Gallery at at 84 William Street Melbourne, from 30 April - 17 May 2025.

 © The Artist, Buku Larrnggay Mulka, and Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne