July 2022

111582145083

Smokey Skies

Though Martumili Artists are most well known as a painting group, several individuals forming part of their rising generation have begun to explore photography as an artistic medium. Inspired and informed by their forebears, these artists represent familiar themes of tradition, culture, and Country in exciting and experimental ways.

Photography has provided a perfect means of documenting the contemporary Aboriginal experience; living across remote Aboriginal communities and urban environments. Through the photographers lens we are afforded a compelling and intimate insight into the remote community life that is unknown to the vast majority of Australian and international viewers, as well as to new modes of engagement with traditional lands.

By , ago

111582145082

Smokey Skies

Though Martumili Artists are most well known as a painting group, several individuals forming part of their rising generation have begun to explore photography as an artistic medium. Inspired and informed by their forebears, these artists represent familiar themes of tradition, culture, and Country in exciting and experimental ways.

Photography has provided a perfect means of documenting the contemporary Aboriginal experience; living across remote Aboriginal communities and urban environments. Through the photographers lens we are afforded a compelling and intimate insight into the remote community life that is unknown to the vast majority of Australian and international viewers, as well as to new modes of engagement with traditional lands.

By , ago

111582145078

Gold Nugget

Though Martumili Artists are most well known as a painting group, several individuals forming part of their rising generation have begun to explore photography as an artistic medium. Inspired and informed by their forebears, these artists represent familiar themes of tradition, culture, and Country in exciting and experimental ways.

Photography has provided a perfect means of documenting the contemporary Aboriginal experience; living across remote Aboriginal communities and urban environments. Through the photographers lens we are afforded a compelling and intimate insight into the remote community life that is unknown to the vast majority of Australian and international viewers, as well as to new modes of engagement with traditional lands.

By , ago

111582145077

Gold Nugget

Though Martumili Artists are most well known as a painting group, several individuals forming part of their rising generation have begun to explore photography as an artistic medium. Inspired and informed by their forebears, these artists represent familiar themes of tradition, culture, and Country in exciting and experimental ways.

Photography has provided a perfect means of documenting the contemporary Aboriginal experience; living across remote Aboriginal communities and urban environments. Through the photographers lens we are afforded a compelling and intimate insight into the remote community life that is unknown to the vast majority of Australian and international viewers, as well as to new modes of engagement with traditional lands.

By , ago

111582145076

Gold Nugget

Though Martumili Artists are most well known as a painting group, several individuals forming part of their rising generation have begun to explore photography as an artistic medium. Inspired and informed by their forebears, these artists represent familiar themes of tradition, culture, and Country in exciting and experimental ways.

Photography has provided a perfect means of documenting the contemporary Aboriginal experience; living across remote Aboriginal communities and urban environments. Through the photographers lens we are afforded a compelling and intimate insight into the remote community life that is unknown to the vast majority of Australian and international viewers, as well as to new modes of engagement with traditional lands.

By , ago

377810582145270

Mardarda and Njarlarla

In Esther’s first screen design, she depicts the story of Mardarda (bones) and Njarlarla (fire sticks) carried in a dilly bag, reminiscent of traditional ways of the Ndjebenna people.

‘Back in the old days, our people would use a ‘bush lighter’ for lighting fires, which was two pieces of special wood which would make fire easily. The old people carried a dilly bag containing the fire stick all times, when they moved camps.

Old people would always carry dilly bags, sometimes with water, honey, food or bones of our deceased people.

When someone passed away their body would be put on a high platform built from eucalyptus and paperbark. They would use a firestick to light a fire under the platform, and people would sing and dance around that platform to send the deceased’s spirit back to his or her country.

The body would then be left here for many months. When ready, the clan would return to collect the bones to take them back to the deceased’s homeland for burial.

To travel to the homeland, people would paint the bones with brown ochre and place them in a dillybag. When they reached the deceased’s homeland, people would sing together, place the bones in the lorrkkon and to leave them rest forever.”

By , ago

377810582145267

Kunkurra (Spiral Wind)

‘My designs, they are all alive living up in my head’- Janet Marawarr

Janet Marawarr has depicted kunkurra, the spiralling wind associated with several sites in the Kardbam clan. On one level, this design can be interpreted as a depiction of the kinds of mini-cyclones common during the wet season in Arnhem Land, where the artist lives. Kunkurra also relates specifically to a site called Bilwoyinj, near Mankorlod, on the artist’s clan estate.

At this site, two of the most important Kuninjku creation beings, a father and son known as na-korrkko, are believed to have hunted and eaten a goanna. They left some of the goanna fat behind at the site, which turned into the rock that still stands there today.

Bilwoyinj site is also a ceremonial ground for a ceremony called Yabbaduruwa, a major ceremony owned by the Yirridja patrimoiety. The Yabbaduruwa ceremony is primarily concerned with initiation, land ownership and promoting the cyclical regeneration of the human and natural worlds.

By , ago