Sally Gabori

Exhibited by Venus Over Manhattan

Material Synthetic polymer paint on linen

Dimensions 77 ¼ x 118 ¼ in

Place of Creation Mornington Island, Australia

Status Vetted

About the Work

Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori’s Thundi (2009) is a monumentally scaled canvas—nearly ten feet wide—rendered in forceful vertical bands of red, white, and black. This expansive composition pays tribute to Gabori’s father’s Country on Bentinck Island, located at the island’s northern tip near the mouth of the Makarrki River. With sweeping, impetuous strokes of wet-on-wet paint, Gabori evokes vivid impressions of the area's shifting sand ridges, ephemeral saltpans, and mangrove-lined riverbanks, which extend into expansive sand and mud flats at low tide. Her deft layering allows tonalities to morph and meld into one another, recalling the "Morning Glory" cloud formations—a rare phenomenon of rolling clouds—and extreme weather patterns that periodically grace the skies over the Gulf of Carpentaria, phenomena she experienced in her youth.

Painted six years before Gabori’s death in 2015, Thundi predates the widespread international recognition that her art would later receive, notably marked by major retrospectives at the Fondation Cartier in Paris and the Triennale di Milano. The painting typifies her extraordinary capacity to channel memory, Country, and a deeply personal sense of place into an expressive, near-abstract field of color. Brushstrokes dynamically intermingle, capturing the fluctuation of tides, frothing waters, and dramatic weather events that have shaped Bentinck Island’s natural rhythms. In Thundi, Gabori poetically fuses recollection and environment, transforming a landscape of familial and cultural significance into a vital, painterly homage.

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