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Ngaldadmurrng

This is a painting of ngaldadmurrng ‘Saratoga fish’ (Scleropages jardini) sometimes also called the Northern Spotted Barramundi.

Saratoga are commonly found in creeks, rivers and billabongs around the artist’s clan estate. The animal depicted is on one level easy to recognise and it’s meaning is easily accessible. On a deeper level the animal is depicted with intense rarrk ‘cross hatched’ infill, which creates a reference to Mardayin ceremonial mysticism. 

Saratoga makes their nests on the bottom of riverbeds in the sand by digging with their tails and fins and lay eggs into these depressions. During mortuary rituals the Kuninjku imitate these nests in sand sculpture. At the end of funerals all those who have attended the funeral are required to stand in the ‘saratoga’s nests’ and they are doused with water to be cleansed from the polluting effects of the deceased. A large meteorite crater near Mumeka in the Liverpool River district is said to be the nest of the saratoga which now stands in the landscape as djang ‘a sacred site’. 

In painting this image Marawarr is continuing a long tradition of figurative artistic practice carried out by Arnhem Land.

 

Categories: Maningrida Arts & Culture

Name: Jack Yurrulbbirri Nawilil

Language: Rembarrnga, Mayali

Community: Maningrida

Biography:

Mayali and Rembarrnga artist Kamarrang Jack Nawilil is a senior member of the Balngarra clan, who lives and works at Bolkjdam, an outstation located near Maningrida community in central Arnhem Land. A song man and cultural leader, he works across painting on bark, carved sculpture and ceremonial objects such as mularra (morning star poles), mako (didgeridoo), lorrkkon (hollow logs) and body adornments using feathers, native beeswax and hand-spun bark fibre string. Common subjects of his work include representations of significant spirit beings, such as wyarra (skeleton), wurum (fish-increasing) and namorrodo (profane) spirits, and important ancestors, including the female creator ancestor Ngalkodjek who travelled from Elcho Island in the East.

The narratives represented in Nawilil’s artworks are extremely complex and often antithetical to Western knowledge systems. His artworks reference and manifest multiple places, clans and events that span vast distances and timeframes. To audiences who are not initiated and socialised in bininj (Aboriginal) cultural practices and history, the true and complete meanings of these artworks cannot be fully grasped. His artworks challenge the viewer to grapple with a different way of being in, and understanding, the world.

Nawilil’s work is held in public and private collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, the Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. He has exhibited with commercial galleries around Australia and overseas for nearly four decades.

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© the artist / art centre