Senior Gija Elder Mabel Juli is one of Australia’s most iconic contemporary artists. Her powerfully distilled images made with hand-foraged ochres pulse with the deep time narratives of her Gija homeland in the remote northeast Kimberley region of Western Australia.
M. Juli grew up on her mother’s Country, Darrajayin at Barlinyin or Springvale Station – 120 km southwest of where Warmun Community and Warmun Art Centre stand today. In her traditional tongue M. Juli is named Wirringgoon after the native crested cockatiel. Within Gija’s kinship system she inherited Nyawurru skin and her Ngarranggarni (Dreaming) totem animals are emu and echidna.

M. Juli spent her childhood learning the ancient Ngarranggarni tales embedded in the rugged landscape. These stories speak of how the geography was formed, and detail important cultural Law: the subjects of M. Juli’s paintings. Memories of playing in the creek and following the contours of the river with her family also feature in her art. From a young age, she was put to domestic work at Springvale homestead.

As a young woman, M. Juli found work on cattle stations with her late husband, with whom she had six children. It was invariably tough for Gija women working as station hands under the colonial regime. In 1968–1969, the introduction of the Federal Pastoral Award demanded equal wages for Aboriginal people, leading to their sudden mass unemployment and displacement. No longer able to live off their lands, many Gija, including M. Juli, became fringe dwellers in impoverished conditions.

The Gija rallied and succeeded in having the Warmun Aboriginal Community established in the 1970s. Emerging in 1975, the Warmun modern art movement would rise to international acclaim. It was seeded by Rover Thomas (c. 1926–1998) after a dream visitation that laid down a series of Ngarranggarni messages. Several Gija Elders including Queenie McKenzie (c. 1915–1998) led the cultural renaissance spurred by this event and were instrumental in translating R. Thomas’ dream into a series of songs, dances and paintings.

It was Q. McKenzie who, in the 1980s, first encouraged M. Juli to try painting. Through observing Q. McKenzie and R. Thomas, she learned how to crush and mix ochres sourced from Country to use as paint, and has gone on to become one of Warmun’s most prolific and celebrated artists.The triptych Garnkiny Ngarranggarni, Garnkiny and Garnkiny doo Wardal (2016) is typical of M. Juli’s style, exemplifying her bold symbolism, command of negative space and the texture and brilliance of her ochre and charcoal.

Since 1994, M. Juli has eight times been a finalist in the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Awards at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin. In 2013 she was awarded the Kate Challis RAKA Award for Visual Arts for her 2010 work Garnkiny Ngarranggarni, which featured in the invited finalists’ showcase at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne. In 2022, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, and Tate Modern, London, announced their joint acquisition of M. Juli’s Garnkiny (2013), as part of the International Joint Acquisition Program for contemporary Australian art.