Muriel Van Der Byl, also known as Mumthelang, is a Yarraldi Aboriginal elder from South Australia who has ancestral links to the Kaurna and Laitji Laitji people of Victoria. She was born in 1943 in Adelaide. Though she always painted she did not take up silk painting until 1992 when she dreamt of painting on silk. In a University of South Australia press release in February 2008, Van Der Byl says of the dream that she “understood that I was being guided spiritually to the medium and that I needed to express my own understanding of my traditional culture artistically and in my own way.”

Van Der Byl has exhibited her works in Objects from the Dreaming: Aboriginal Decorated and Woven Objects at the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1996, in From Scrap to Art with Sandra Saunders at the Austral Hotel in Adelaide in 1998, in The Painted Coast: Views of the Fleurieu Peninsula Coast of South Australia at the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1998, in Our Mob at the Adelaide Festival Centre in 2006 and in My deaming – past – present – future in 2008 at the Kerry Packer Civic Gallery in the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre, University of South Australia.
Van Der Byl sat on the Board of Management for the Adelaide Fringe and in 2005 was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia for services to the Indigenous community through the promotion of art and culture and as an advocate for social justice.
She is in the collections of the Art Gallery of South Australia and the Flinders University Art Museum.
Van Der Byl lives and works in Tailem Bend, South Australia.

Writers:

Allas, Tess

Date written:

2009

Last updated:

2011