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Unconstrained by a pre-existing Kaiadilt painting tradition or inherited lexicon of signs, Sally Gabori undoubtedly went further than many other women artists and authored a non-derivative radical language that bypasses the need for written explanations or stories that beleaguer the field of Aboriginal art, to express sensations of locus, life and cultural memory in diaspora. The artist found a language that enabled her to live psychically in Country, from which she had been severed, and in so doing created something big, imposing and utterly original.

Judith Ryan, Senior Curator, Indigenous Art - Excerpt from Unprecedented: The Art of Sally Gabori, in Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori. Publication Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, 2022.

At the heart of Sally Gabori’s paintings is an incredible human universality. Although they may appear abstract, they radiate emotional warmth in their celebration of her family and her home. They are paintings of loss, of longing, of love. One day the Kaiadilt community hopes to make a memorial for Sally Gabori on Bentinck Island to commemorate her many achievements in the art world. Perhaps more importantly, it will serve as an enduring witness of the primacy of the connection between this great artist to the place she was torn from as a young woman but who carried it always as her Dulka warngiid. Her land of all. Her whole world. Her home.

Bruce Johnson McLean, Assistant Director, Indigenous Engagement at National Gallery of Australia - From the exhibition catalog Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori: Dulka Warngiid - Land of All, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2016, pp. 13-31.