David Gulpilil AM (1953–2021), actor and dancer, was a Yolngu man of the Mandhalpuyngu language group, born near Maningrida in Arnhem Land. Having been raised in the bush and educated in the customs of his people, Gulpilil was sixteen when film director, Nicholas Roeg, saw him performing a traditional dance and cast him in the film, Walkabout (1971). Subsequently, he appeared in films such as Storm Boy (1976) and Crocodile Dundee (1986); and portrayed Bennelong in the television series The Timeless Land (1980). His later film credits include an award-winning performance in The Tracker (2002), Rabbit Proof Fence (2002), The Proposition (2005), Australia (2008) and the Yolngu-language Ten Canoes (2006), the idea for which Gulpilil developed with director Rolf de Heer. After returning to his ancestral lands to subsist through crocodile hunting and fishing, the contradictions and difficulties of his existence between Yolngu and balanda (European) cultures were examined in his one-man autobiographical stage show Gulpilil, conceived by Neil Armfield and Stephen Page, which premiered at the Adelaide Festival in 2004. Gulpilil was awarded the Red Ochre Prize at the National Indigenous Arts Awards in 2013.
One of several portraits of Gulpilil in the collection, this 2006 photograph by George Fetting depicts Gulpilil at a waterhole in Kakadu, and was a finalist in the 2007 National Photographic Portrait Prize.
National Photographic Portrait Prize 2007 Finalist
Gift of the artist 2008
© George Fetting/Copyright Agency, 2023
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