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Published by CompNet Systems on April 17, 2024

Billabong at Mankorlod

Aboriginal bark paintings have a long cultural tradition, believed to extend back many thousands of years.
In northern Australia, paintings on bark shelters in the Kimberley and Arnhem Land were stylistically similar to rock shelter paintings. The Aboriginal bark paintings were used to convey and illustrate stories which were told to the clan when holed up in the shelter for long periods in the wet season. In Kimberly, the Aboriginal bark paintings by Lily karadada resemble ancient rock art Wandjina paintings which are themselves many, many thousands of years old.

Bark paintings with deep cultural and ritual significance still feature in the Aboriginal sacred ceremonies of northern Australia and they, along with some coastal inhabitants are the only indigenous Aborigines still making traditional bark paintings.

The process of making a bark painting begins with choosing a suitable stringybark eucalyptus tree, preferably in the wet season when the sap is rising and the bark is fairly supple and easy to grip. After finding a section of bark that is devoid of knots and termite damage, cuts are made top and bottom and after some encouragement by tugging and prying, a hollow open cylinder of bark is removed. The bark sheet is trimmed and a fire made ready, over which the bark will be cured to drive out any moisture. The bark is then flattened to the ground with feet and then held down with heavy weights to ensure that it doesn’t curl or warp.

The Aboriginal bark painters of Arnhem Land adhere to four basic pigments – red, black, white and yellow. The reds and yellows come from ochres, crushed and powdered rocks. White comes from pipeclay and black generally comes from charcoal. Sometimes natural fixatives are mixed in to bind the pigments and which includes wax, yolk of eggs, resins and the sap of orchid plants. The paint can then be applied to the bark with perhaps a rarrk design by using a wood comb, or with brushes made from human hair or even feathers.

Categories: Maningrida Arts & Culture

Name: Ivan Namirrkki

Language: Kuninjku

Community: Maningrida

Biography:

“We have been all around the world to exhibitions. I am the voice of this artists group and a strong man; a proud traditional owner who is happy to inform my peoples of our future in telling stories around the world. We are thinking about our history, always thinking as we are creating and learning, and my family put their stories on some bark and some rocks here in this country. For my kids and grandkids to learn and teach their kids and grandkids, I think this is really wonderful. This is really important to me and the people of this community, so that this story can keep me strong story, one that is passed on for future generations.” - Ivan Namirrkki.

Kuninjku artist Ivan Namirrkki was born in 1961. Namirrkki was taught to paint by his father Peter Marralwanga (1917–1987) - a renowned bark painter and political proponent of the maintenance of ‘country’.

Namirrkki was first taught to paint by his father in a figurative manner. The focus was stories like Kalawan and Namorrorddo for his Kardbam clan lands near Mankorlod although later Marralwanga also guided Namirrkki in the stories for other clans around Kumurrulu. He helped his father work on two exhibitions in Perth in 1981 and 1983 and travelled to Perth as part of the project. To distinguish his own figurative works Namirrkki often used black paint as the background to the figures although, like his father, he also became adept at varying the pattern of infill from rarrk to dotting to sections of full colour to create dynamic visual effects. In the late 1990s Namirrkki moved to paint geometric work in the Mardayin style. His style is very strongly symmetrical with evenly spaced bands of rarrk arrayed in concentric diamond forms. This diamond arrangement has become his signature and it features as the background of works that show the complex interconnections between waterholes in his country. He also contrasts this patterning with dotting and other variations of rarrk to indicate the power of the sites. Occasionally Namirrkki will return to paint figurative images or combine them in more geometric images.

Common themes in his work include the ngalyod (rainbow serpent), birmlu and djarlahdjarlah (barramundi), kalawan (goanna), komorlo (little egret), komrdawh (freshwater turtle), nadjinem (black wallarroo), nakidikidi (a harmful and nasty spirit), namorrorddo (a profane spirit), nayuhyungki bininj (ancient people), ngaldjalarrk (snake), ngalyod (rainbow serpent), ngurrurdu (emu), and yawkyawk (a female water spirit).

He is also known for painting leech djang located at Yibalaydjyigod and maggot djang located at Yirolk. Luke Taylor cites Namirrkki and his father’s work, transferring this djang (or dreaming), as a political act, invoking a tangible aboriginal ontology in relation to land, life and the spiritual.

“The point of painting such work for the market is to expose viewers directly to the power of the Ancestral realm…Namirrkki has spoken of his love for country particularly the soothing qualities of living adjacent to its important waters. There is also a confidence and peace derived from living in one’s heartland that flows to all activities conducted there. An understanding of the importance of country provides the context for more developed understanding of Kuninjku concepts of personhood, sociality, power, and health, as well as local constructions of other frameworks of human experience such as aesthetic experience.”1

Namirrkki began exhibiting his work in the early nineteen eighties and has been presented in numerous group and solo shows over the years, both in Australia and overseas. In 2006 he was a finalist in the National Gallery of Victoria’s Clemenger Contemporary Art Prize. Namarrkki’s art can be found in many collections including that of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of South Australia.

1. Luke Taylor, Connections of Spirit: Kuninjku Attachments to Country, in Country, Native Title and Ecology, ed. Jessica K. Weir, pp. 21-46.

© the artist / art centre