Banduk Marika

Her father, Mawalan Marika (1908–1967), was an artist and he taught her the techniques of bark painting.

He was known for his talent and expertise in the technique known as rarrk, or cross-hatching.

Her siblings include brother Wandjuk Marika; and sisters artist Dhuwarrwarr Marika, and teacher-linguist/artist Yalmay Marika Yunupingu (who served at Yirrkala School for 40 years teaching "both ways" bilingual education until her retirement in 2023); also, Bayngul and Laklak.

Marika was educated at the mission at Yirrkala until the age of 15.

Marika was among a small group to be taught and supported by male relatives (including her father ) to paint traditional creation stories, which were formerly only allowed to be done by men.

Artist Ruby Alderton is her daughter.

Banduk Mamburra Wananamba Marika (13 October 1954 – 12 July 2021), known after her death as Dr B Marika, was an artist, printmaker and environmental activist from Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia, who was dedicated to the development, recognition and preservation of Indigenous Australian art and culture.

She was the first Aboriginal person to serve on the National Gallery of Australia's board.

Marika was born on 13 October 1954 at Yirrkala, north-east Arnhem Land, a member of the Rirratjingu clan of the Yolngu people, whose traditional land is Yalangbara.

She moved first to Darwin in 1972 (or 1974? ), where she served as Secretary on the Northern Land Council until 1980.

During this time she also worked as an Aboriginal field officer, youth worker at the YWCA, and became mother to four children.

She then moved to Sydney in 1980 to pursue her artistic career.

She began printmaking in Sydney, which she preferred over painting for the rest of her career.

In Sydney she also arranged exhibitions of Aboriginal art.

In the mid-1980s Marika was artist-in-residence first at the Canberra School of Art (1985) and then at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia (1986).

She also appeared in Bride for all Seasons! (?) and the docudrama television series Flight into Hell (1985).

She features in the ABC Television documentary film, Dream Time, Machine Time (1987 ) along with poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal, painter Trevor Nickolls and writer Archie Weller.

In 1988, Marika returned to Yirrkala, to take up the role of manager of Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Arts Centre and Museum, and also became member of the Yirrkala-Dhanbul Community Council.

She continued to travel for the purpose of artistic collaborations with other printmakers.

Djanda and the Sacred Waterhole (1988), a work commissioned by the Australian National University to commemorate the Australian Bicentenary, was created using linocut on paper, using six colours.

It represented a story of great significance to the Rirratjingu clan, involving part of the complex storyline of the Djang'kawu at Yalangbara.

She had special rights to use this story by virtue of her land ownership and position in the clan.

The National Gallery of Australia bought one of the prints made by her, while another was purchased for reproduction in a book called Aboriginality.

She was also artist-in-residence at the East Sydney Technical College's school of Art and the Warrnambool TAFE.

Marika incorporated the stories of her clan in her artistic work, such as the Djan'kawu, the Wagilag sisters and the turtle hunters.

In 1993, it was found that Marika's print Djanda and the Sacred Waterhole (1988) had been reproduced without permission on rugs made in Vietnam and marketed by the Perth-based company Indofurn Pty Ltd. Marika joined with the two other artists whose works had been used, George Milpurrurru and Tim Payungka Tjapangarti, to seek reparations under the Copyright Act 1968 and Trade Practices Act.

A total of eight artists took action against the company, in a case that became known as the "carpets case" and in 1994 the Federal Court of Australia awarded damages of A$188,000 to the artists and ordered that the rugs be released to them.

This was the largest penalty awarded for copyright infringement against Australian artists up to that time, and included compensation for cultural damage stemming from the unauthorised use of sacred imagery.

Banduk said in 1997: ...my brother and I were known to the family as the outcasts because we moved outside of our boundary and went out to an unknown territory that was known as the balanda world, white man's world.

And he (Wandjuk) initiated the whole debate about copyright that is still being fought twenty years on.

Marika, along with the Rirratjingi clan and the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT), worked together to publish Yalangbara: Art of the Djang'kawu, launched at Government House, Darwin in 2009.

The book examines many aspects of Yolngu culture, art, history, tradition, as well as their custodial relationship to land and the issue of copyright.

The name derives from the supernatural ancestor siblings, the Djang'kawu, and includes artwork from three generations of Marikas depicting aspects of the story.

The Yalangbara: art of the Djang'kawu touring exhibition, instigated by Marika and developed with the assistance of other family members and MAGNT, opened at the National Museum of Australia from 7 December 2010.

This was the first major survey exhibition of the Marika family's work, and covers around 50 named sites in the Yalangbara peninsula that were traversed by the Djang'kawu journey.

Her work has been shown in America, India, Egypt, Noumea and Singapore, and is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia; Te Papa in New Zealand; and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. In 2016, Trinity College, Melbourne acquired her Yalangbara suite of works on paper, and the Burke Gallery at the college mounted an exhibition of her work in early 2021.

In 2017 she and Tiwi Islander Bede Tungutalum were chosen to design a set of four postage stamps with the theme "Art of the North" for Australia Post.

Five of her prints were shown in the Know My Name exhibition of Australian women artists in 2020-21 at the National Gallery of Australia.

She worked as a translator with Film Australia and on the TV series Women of the Sun.

She appeared in several films: