July 2025

Coil Basket

Coil basketry is a well-established fibre art form in the Maningrida region, especially for women from the Kuninjku, Rembarrnga, Ndjebbana and Nakkara language groups. 

Artists make coiled baskets of many shapes and sizes, ranging from small round baskets to large oval baby baskets, and made mostly from pandanus fibre that is dyed with natural pigments. Bundles of fibre are formed into coils which are covered and stitched together with strands of fibre threaded onto a needle. Artists combine colours and patterns to obtain intricate new graphic patterns.

These techniques are believed to have been introduced to Arnhem Land by Greta Matthews, a missionary on Goulburn Island in the 1920s. She had probably learnt coil basketry from Aboriginal people in the south-east of Australia, possibly the Murray River people such as the Yorta Yorta or the coastal Ngarrindjeri. 

The coiling technique spread quickly from Goulburn Island to people on mainland Arnhem Land. 

Djomi

There are two Dreaming ladies at Bábbarra billabong – Djómi and Bábbarra. These two are sisters: one freshwater ‘mermaid’ and one saltwater one. Big long head, big stomach and very skinny legs that Bábbarra.

Their mother is the crocodile who lives in the Bábbarra billabong.

Both sisters will give people babies through the drinking water at Bábbarra. That’s why men stay away and Bábbarra is a sacred women’s site. Too strong our Dreaming – even men can get that baby in their tummies!

When it rains at Bábbarra, or when a cyclone comes, it’s because our Dreaming is too strong. There are lots of women spirits. When the storms come, the spirits go in the underground rivers and hide safely.

If you go fishing in our country, you have to be careful not to catch the Bábbarra and Djómi ‘mermaids’. Some people catch them thinking they are barramundi, but they are actually the ‘mermaid’ spirits. You will know, because they have white hair.

Lena Djabibba, djungkay (mother’s country and ceremonial manager of Bábbarra) and Joy Garlbin (landowner for Bábbarra)

Text courtesy of Bábbarra Women’s Centre copyright 2017

Sandfly

Bark paintings have a long cultural tradition, believed to extend back many thousands of years. In northern Australia, the walls of bark shelters in the Kimberley and Arnhem Land may well have been painted to convey and illustrate stories in the same way that rock shelters were. Bark painters in the Maningrida region invoke customary practices and experiment with visual forms. Their paintings merge the natural and spiritual worlds, the secular and sacred, and embody and evoke ancestral presence.The subject matter of some works on bark express or focus on djang, the power of country itself; others the ancestral activities that created it or inhabit it: the powerful Rainbow Serpent Ngalyod, female water spirits including Yawkyawk and jin-Merdewa, and spirit beings such as Namorrorddo and Wangarra. Some paintings feature geometric designs inspired by body painting. Spirit figures such as the long thin Mimih spirits said to live in the rock country are also frequently depicted, as are animals hunted as game, including kangaroo and barramundi. 

The process of making a bark painting begins with the artist choosing a suitable tree (stringybark gum tree, Eucalyptus tetrodonta), 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 free 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 rough outer bark is stripped off and the bark sheet is trimmed and placed over a fire, inner side downwards, to drive out moisture, including the sap. The bark sheet, pliable from its steaming session, is next placed on the ground and trodden on to flatten it out. Heavy weights are placed on it as it cools to ensure that it doesn’t curl or warp.

Artists use a rich palette of colours derived from natural pigments that can be sourced from their clan estates. The reds, purples, pinks and yellows come from ochres (forms of iron oxide or limonite). Black generally comes from charcoal, and white is from pipeclay. All of these earth pigments are strongly associated with djang. The pipeclay used to create the brilliant white paint, for example, is said to be the faeces of the powerful Rainbow Serpent (Ngalyod in the Kuninjku language) and the spirit essence of the Mardayin ceremony.

Sometimes natural fixatives are mixed in to bind the pigments: wax, yolk of eggs, resins and the sap of orchid plants. Today PVA glue is more commonly used as a binding agent for the pigments. The tool that an artist uses to apply colour to the bark depends on the style of painting and available resources. It may be a feather, or a brush made from a few strands of straight human hair. Cyperus javanicus, a tough sedge grass, may be used to make the slim reed brush required to execute the fine rarrk designs. 

Coil Basket

Coil basketry is a well-established fibre art form in the Maningrida region, especially for women from the Kuninjku, Rembarrnga, Ndjebbana and Nakkara language groups. 

Artists make coiled baskets of many shapes and sizes, ranging from small round baskets to large oval baby baskets, and made mostly from pandanus fibre that is dyed with natural pigments. Bundles of fibre are formed into coils which are covered and stitched together with strands of fibre threaded onto a needle. Artists combine colours and patterns to obtain intricate new graphic patterns.

These techniques are believed to have been introduced to Arnhem Land by Greta Matthews, a missionary on Goulburn Island in the 1920s. She had probably learnt coil basketry from Aboriginal people in the south-east of Australia, possibly the Murray River people such as the Yorta Yorta or the coastal Ngarrindjeri. 

The coiling technique spread quickly from Goulburn Island to people on mainland Arnhem Land. 

Coil Basket

Coil basketry is a well-established fibre art form in the Maningrida region, especially for women from the Kuninjku, Rembarrnga, Ndjebbana and Nakkara language groups. 

Artists make coiled baskets of many shapes and sizes, ranging from small round baskets to large oval baby baskets, and made mostly from pandanus fibre that is dyed with natural pigments. Bundles of fibre are formed into coils which are covered and stitched together with strands of fibre threaded onto a needle. Artists combine colours and patterns to obtain intricate new graphic patterns.

These techniques are believed to have been introduced to Arnhem Land by Greta Matthews, a missionary on Goulburn Island in the 1920s. She had probably learnt coil basketry from Aboriginal people in the south-east of Australia, possibly the Murray River people such as the Yorta Yorta or the coastal Ngarrindjeri. 

The coiling technique spread quickly from Goulburn Island to people on mainland Arnhem Land. 

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 people. Such spirits feature importantly in relation to Aboriginal spirituality, cosmology, social and moral tales as well as ritual. As is true with the multiple mediums employed by artists of West Arnhem Land, the development of artistic style and form is in line with an awareness by the artist that the work produced is predominantly made for a broader audience. Whether shown in a national or international context these works communicate and exist in a particular space that is cross-cultural and simultaneously particular to the Arnhem region.

The mimih sits within a complex pedagogical and religious body of knowledge which links Kuninjku people to their distinctive escarpment homelands. Young Kuninjku artists, or apprentices, employ the mimih as an important exercise for the practice of the rarrk technique, as it could be achieved on a smaller surface area before being attempted in larger scale on pieces of bark. The mimih serves a purpose for those young artists first learning to carve in a social space of sharing and innovating. The initial mimih manifestation was a large form that almost mirrored the anatomy of a human and at this stage the sculptures have been likened to mokuy carvings visible in eastern Arnhem Land. Contemporaneously, mimih are depicted in a refined, slender, even emaciated form with a broad range of facial expressions giving both individual character to, and denoting the potential volatility and humour that mimih spirits are notable for in their interaction with bininj (humans). The sculptures are frequently carved from the thin trunks of softwoods such as kapok (bombax ceiba or cottonwood) kurrajong, beach hibiscus or leichardt and are painted with earth pigments for their colouring and design.

A leading figure engaging the spirit in visual storytelling was Crusoe Kuningbal, a Kuninjku man, who while traveling was familiarised with carving styles from the east of Arnhem at the mission in Milingimbi pre-dating World War II. The connection and development of art forms informed by cross cultural dialogues within northern Aboriginal language groups is notable. The mimih became a valued inclusion in performance and public ceremony by Kuninjku people like Kuningbal. At times these ceremonies were performed for extended language groups in the local region. 

Now a familiar and broadly depicted figure of iconography, it is important to acknowledge the development of this quite recent sculptural tradition. The depiction of this particular spirit being, once used as an addition to the sharing of song cycles and ceremony, has since been elevated to a prominent form and subject of contemporary sculpture. Variation in the creation of mimih acts as an indication of the individualism of each artist and their stylistic markers. Additionally significant to note is that in the space of the past thirty years the mimih has begun being produced by multiple language groups residing in the Maningrida area including the traditional owners of Maningrida, the Ndjébbana, speaking Kunibidji as well as Gurrgoni people who have strong ties to Kuninjku. 

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*Maningrida Arts & Culture acknowledge the work of many academic and non-academic voices when writing on this topic, it is important to note Luke Taylor, who’s broad research has informed this text.