111982355403

Published by CompNet Systems on

Milmilngkan

Artist Semeria Wurrkidj has depicted Milmilngkan, an outstation some 50km inland from Maningrida, and home of her late father, John Mawurndjul AM. It is a picturesque site near a billabong, and it is said that underneath the water lies the power of Ngalyod (the rainbow serpent). Semeria depicts the power of the place with rarrk (cross-hatching) which contains Mardayin power. 

Kuninjku people say there are two Rainbow serpents. One is Yingarna, who is said to have been the original creator of all ancestral beings, the ‘first mother’. Yingarna’s first born is Ngaloyd. Yingarna, or her son Ngalyod, are a common subject on contemporary Kuninjku bark paintings.

Ngalyod is very important in Kuninjku cosmology and is associated with the creation of all sacred sites, djang, in Kuninjku clan lands. For example, ancestral stories relate how creator or ancestral beings had travelled across the country and had angered Ngalyod who swallowed them and returned to the earth to create the site. Today, Ngalyod protects these sites, and its power is present in each one.

Ngalyod has both powers of creation and destruction and is most strongly associated with rain, monsoon seasons and rainbows which are a manifestation of Ngalyod’s power and presence. Ngalyod is associated with the destructive power of the storms and with the plenty of the wet season, being both a destroyer and a giver of life. Ngalyod’s power controls the fertility of the country and the seasons.

Categories: Maningrida Arts & Culture

Name: Semeria Wurrkidj

Language: Kuninjku

Community: Maningrida

Biography:

Semeria is a painter and sculptor. She specialising in bark painting, dolobbo bim,  and carvings depicting spirit beings, such as yawkyawk and mimih that reside on her clan estate, Kurulk. She is the daughter of acclaimed artists John Mawurndjul and Kay Lindjuwanga. She is part of the next generation of Kuninjku artists trained and working in the designs of her father whose career has been celebrated for decades. She depicts designs for which Mawurndjul has given permission to represent, including Wak (Black Crow) and mankabo, the creek that runs from Milmingkan to Kurrurldul outstations.

Like other Kuninjku artists, Wurrkidj maintains the cultural knowledge and practices of working with natural materials: ochres which are mixed with water and PVA fixative and applied with manyilk (sedge grass) to bark (stingybark) in the Wet season and lorrkkon (hollow log burial poles) and spirit carvings in the Dry season. She primarily engages the red, yellow, black and white palette of her father, but achieves a softer effect. 

Related Posts

Maningrida Arts & Culture

111982360915

Mimih Spirit The mimih spirit exists in a realm that runs parallel to and mirrors many facets of human life, demonstrating the deep sense of time and place understood by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Read more…

Maningrida Arts & Culture

111982360914

Kunkaninj (Digging Stick) Kunkaninj (digging stick) is used to dig for yams and for finding long-neck turtles, but is also an important Duwa moiety totemic ancestor. It shares the same songline as barlangu (shark) and Read more…

Maningrida Arts & Culture

111982360913

Ngalkodjek Yawkyawk This artwork depicts the Ngalkodjek Yawkyawk of Barrihdjowkkeng country. “This story is very old. That old man [my father Crusoe Kuningbal] when he was alive, told that story to me, to all of us. Read more…

© the artist / art centre