Gail Mabo

Gail Mabo is a descendant of the Meriam people of Mer (Murray Island, Torres Strait), Pacific Islander people (Vanuatu) and Manbarra people (Eastern North Queensland). Beginning her career as a dancer, Mabo has risen to prominence in recent times for her printmaking, sculpture and installation.

In the development of this exhibition, each artist saw in the alternative definition of current—‘belonging to the present time’—an opportunity to create new work based on what is critical to their practice at this moment in their careers. Ma’rap Sau (2023) reflects the continuation of Gail Mabo’s recent series of installations recreating culturally and personally significant environments. In 2022, she exhibited vivid simulacra of the childhood homes of her parents, Eddie Koiki and Bonita Mabo at the Rockhampton Museum of Art. Tamer mut (2023) is an interactive sound sculpture which, like Ma’rap Sau, is made from bamboo harvested from four different locations in and around the artist’s hometown of Townsville.

Mabo offers visitors the extraordinary opportunity to experience in a virtual sense her Traditional Country. She invites us to contemplate how one’s ancestral and cultural histories can remain alive in the present.

Note about this work
Gail Mabo’s work in Current originally comprised an immersive installation representing Meriam windbreaks, kar, and forest, sau, from lengths of bamboo, ma’rap, alongside a traditional bamboo wind instrument called Tamer mut. Due to a biosecurity issue, we are unable to show Ma’rap sau and Tamer mut at the Australian Design Centre. In their place is a film which Mabo shot in Townsville in 2023 presented on loop, and a recreation of the edge of Mer, the basaltic island of her ancestors. Carved totemic forms are positioned on the sand. Images of Ma’rap sau and Tamer mut along with an essay on Mabo’s work are included in the exhibition catalogue available in Object Shop.

Ma’rap Sau 2023
bamboo, clay, concrete, film
Courtesy the artist

Tamer mut 2023
bamboo, concrete, rubber thongs
Courtesy the artist

Image top: Gail Mabo, Ma'rap Sau, 2023. Photo: Courtesy of McClelland Gallery.