Important Australian & International Art

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LIN ONUS (1948-1996)
Yorta Yorta language group
Bulla Goonyah 1993
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
182.0 x 182.0 cm
Estimate: $350,000 – $500,000
© Lin Onus/Copyright Agency, 2026

Menzies is delighted to present its digital catalogue for the forthcoming auction of Important Australian & International Art to be held in Melbourne on 27 August.

Leading the auction is Bulla Goonyah 1993 by Lin Onus, a quintessential example of the artist’s finest subject. The title translates to Two Fish, referring to the raark-incised protagonists who inhabit the dark waters in the upper left, between Onus’s two visual registers: the conspicuous surface accents of fern leaves, gum leaves, ripples and glinting sunlight; and the subdued pebbled underwater floor.

With both Scottish and Aboriginal ancestry, Onus described himself as a ‘bridge between cultures.’ He was acclaimed for combining ecological knowledge with cultural memory to create profoundly unique paintings, and was awarded the Member of the Order of Australia the same year he painted Bulla Goonyah.

In Menzies’ catalogue essay Jane Raffan observes that Bulla Goonyah:

… questions narratives by challenging one’s ‘viewing position’ – preconceptions and assumptions – in a transcendental aesthetic engagement about cultural hegemony. With the fish camouflaged, Onus asks us to adopt a different mode of looking, to look beyond the surface of things to what lies beneath. Once found, we wonder why we failed to see the fish in the first place.

View the Full Catalog on Invaluable