Draft:Baluka Maymuru

Baluka Maymuru (born 1947) is an Aboriginal Australian artist from Yirrkala in the Northern Territory. He is the son of renowned artist Näyin' Maymuru and the elder brother of Narritjin Maymuru. Baluka is the current head of the Manggalili clan. The Manggalili clan is one of the Yirritja moiety clans of the Yolngu cultural bloc of northeast Arnhem Land.

Career
Baluka Maymuru is a sculptor, painter and printmaker. His paintings are done on bark with natural pigments. He mostly paints images that represent the saltwater homeland of Djarrakpi near Cape Shield. He works through the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre at Yirrkala.

Baluka contributed bark painting to the Saltwater project, which was an effort by the Yolngu people of north east Arnhem Land to affirm ownership of the saltwater coastline. Through the paintings, forty-seven Yolngu artists represented their laws, stories, and customs, as these are fundamental to the clans belonging to the Yirritja Moiety of the Manggalili clan.

In addition, these saltwater paintings were used as evidence in the Blue Mud Bay Native title case. This case in the High Court of Australia gave the traditional owners control of all access to the coastal waters along 80% of the northern territory coastline.

Baluka is also one of the handful of artists to have produced work for both the 1996 John W. Kluge commission and the 2017-19 Kluge-Ruhe Maḏayin commission. Baluka curated the Manggalili clan section of the exhibition Maḏayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Painting from Yirrkala and contributed the essay "Dhuwala Romdja Balanyaya Malanynha | This Law We Hold" to the exhibition catalogue.

In addition to his inclusion in many collections, he has also won the Wandjuk Marika 3D Memorial Award at the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards twice, in 1987 and 2006.

Notable exhibitions
Aratjara, Art of the First Australians, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, 24 April-4 July 1993 (and touring).

Miny’tji – Paintings from the East, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1995.

Native Title, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 1997.

Saltwater Country – Bark Paintings from Yirrkala, Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra, ACT, John Curtin Gallery, Curtin Uni, Perth,WA; Australian National Maritime Museum, Darling Harbour, Sydney, NSW; Museum of Modern Art at Heide, Melbourne,VIC; Araluen Art Centre, Alice Springs, NT; Queensland University of Technology Art Museum, Brisbane, Qld; 1999-2001.

Maḏayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Painting from Yirrkala. Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 3–December 4, 2022; American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Cente r, Washington, DC, January 28–May 21, 2023; The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, February 22–July 21, 2024; Asia Society Museum, New York, September 16, 2024–January 5, 2025.