Lydia Balbal: Little Bit Long Way
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Lydia BalbalMartakulu, 2023acrylic on linen150 x 181 cm$14,500 -
Lydia BalbalWinpa, 2023acrylic on linen122 x 183.5 cm$12,000
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Lydia BalbalMartakulu, 2023acrylic on linen138 x 140 cmSold
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Lydia BalbalMartakulu, 2023acrylic on linen120 x 146 cm$9,500
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Lydia BalbalMartakulu, 2023acrylic on linen81 x 184 cm$9,000
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Lydia BalbalMartakulu, 2023acrylic on linen150 x 102 cm$9,000
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Lydia BalbalWinpa, 2023acrylic on linen122 x 123 cm$9,000
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Lydia BalbalMartakulu, 2023acrylic on linen104 x 133 cmSold
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Lydia BalbalMartakulu, 2023acrylic on linen123 x 102 cm$7,500
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Lydia BalbalMartakulu, 2023acrylic on linen137.5 x 91 cm$7,500
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Lydia BalbalMartakulu, 2023acrylic on linen138 x 90 cmSold
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Lydia BalbalWirnpa, 2023acrylic on linen117 x 82 cm$7,000
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Lydia BalbalWirnpa, 2023acrylic on linen122 x 81.5 cm$7,000
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Lydia BalbalWirnpa, 2023acrylic on linen71 x 154 cm$7,000
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Lydia BalbalMartakulu, 2023acrylic on linen126.5 x 76.5 cm$7,000
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Lydia BalbalMartakulu, 2023acrylic on linen98.5 x 81.5 cmSold
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Lydia BalbalWirnpa, 2023acrylic on linen101 x 71 cm$5,800
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Lydia BalbalWirnpa, 2023acrylic on linen100 x 60 cm$5,600
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Lydia BalbalWirnpa, 2023acrylic on linen74.5 x 68.5 cm$3,000
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Lydia BalbalMartakulu, 2023acrylic on linen92 x 46 cmSold
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Lydia BalbalWirnpa, 2023acrylic on linen70 x 45 cmSold
I’m painting underground, what’s underground. Upside down: water, rockholes, lines beneath the sand-dunes. – Lydia Balbal
On a day like any other Lydia Balbal walked into Broome’s Short St Gallery and announced in brisk, determined fashion, that the time had come for her to paint. Gallerist Emily Rohr says “Lydia is extremely free,” she continues “unconstrained in her art – she throws it right open – and that links to her tremendous, anarchic temperament … She translates what she knows in a new way. She’s not just making tight, precise designs. Her expression becomes operatic: even a small patch of colour in her work has a vastness.”
Lydia Balbal is a Mangala woman who began painting in 2007. Her country is near Punmu in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia. Threatened by severe drought her people left their traditional country and her family were some of the last to walk out to the coastal town of Bidyadanga (then La Grange Mission) located two hours south of Broome in the 70s.
In this series of works Balbal explores jila (living water) located near the Percival Lakes in the Great Sandy Desert in Western Australia. It is an important gathering of the Yulparija and neighbouring groups where they would come together for rain making ceremonies. Other works in the collection highlight martakulu, a soak out near Punmu near the Canning Stock Route. This is strong woman’s Country and part of the women's law line.
Long time ago a law man he come up to this country, he went home and left his wife and baby. They make him fire and sit down, cook mayi (bush food) and then started to cry for her husband. Her tears made that soak. It is important country this one. – Lydia Balbal
These paintings are rendered with shimmering desert hues and softer saltwater colours. The artworks reveal the long distances Balbal had to walk to reach the oasis of the coast, Little Bit Long Way. The gentle washes of white and pink are at one time strikingly vast and profoundly intimate.
Lydia Balbal is a highly regarded Bidyadanga artists whose works feature in the collections of the Western Australian Art Gallery, Queensland Art Gallery, National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Australia, Parliament House Collection, Artbank & the Laverty Collection. Balbal has exhibited extensively in Australia, France, China, Spain, England, Belgium, Italy and America. This exhibition is presented in collaboration with Short St Gallery in Broome.
