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Babies in Coolamon
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Kunkih (Mud Ripples)
This design depicts the patterns of the freshwater mud ripples, which emerge after strong monsoonal wet seasons on the Djinkarr and Nangak flood plains.
These ripples form on the earth’s surface in delicate repetitive and shifting patterns. The mud ripples move, crack, disappear and re-emerge in response to the changing wind, rains and new sun.
The mud ripples depicted in this design are on Elizabeth’s homeland, the Djinkarr and Nangak floodplains south of Maningrida in Arnhem Land.
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Kalawan (Goanna)
This painting depicts two goannas embedded in an intricate depiction of kunkurra, the mini cyclones common during the wet season in Arnhem Land. Kunkurra also relates specifically to the Bilwoyinj site. At this site, two of the most important Kuninjku creation beings, a father and son, hunted and ate goanna. They left some goanna fat behind, which turned into the rock that still stands at the site today.
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Lorrkon (Hollow Log)
The Lorrkon or bone pole coffin ceremony is the final ceremony in a sequence of mortuary rituals celebrated by the people of Arnhem Land. This ceremony involves the placing of the deceased’s bones into a hollow log decorated with painted clan designs and ceremonially placed into the ground where it remains until it slowly decays over many years.
The log is made from a termite hollowed Stringybark tree (Eucalyptus tetradonta) and is decorated with totemic emblems. The western Arnhem Land version of the Lorrkon ceremony involves the singing of sacred songs to the accompaniment of karlikarli, a pair of sacred boomerangs used as rhythm instruments. During the final evening of the ceremony, dancers decorate themselves with kapok down, or today, cotton wool and conduct much of the final segments of the ceremony in the secrecy of a restricted men’s camp. The complete ceremony may stretch over a period of two weeks, but on the last night the bones of the deceased, which have been kept in bark or wrapped in cloth, are taken out, painted with red ochre and placed inside the hollow log. This ceremony may take place many years after the person has died.
At first light on the final morning of the Lorrkon ceremony, the men appear, coming out of their secret bush camp carrying the pole towards the women’s camp. The two groups call to each other using distinct ceremonial calls. The women have prepared a hole for the pole to be placed into and when it is stood upright, women in particular kinship relationships to the deceased dance around the pole in a jumping/shuffling motion. The Lorrkon is then often covered with a tarpaulin and left to slowly decay.
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Djomi
Djomi is a freshwater spring surrounded by jungle at the mouth of the Liverpool River. It is a major sacred site with extensive mythological significance for the Kunibidji people. Mermaids live in the freshwater spring. They are associated with djabayena, the sawfish, and sometimes are depicted as the sawfish itself or as a woman with the sawfish’s tail.
The Djomi site is linked to dreaming paths with extend east along the coast as far as Milingimbi and Ramingining. Mermaid sites are found in both saltwater and freshwater country, and freshwater and saltwater clans who own separate mermaid sites are linked in myth by stories of a mermaid spirit swimming up from the sea to the freshwater. The Kunibidji have close kinship and ceremonial ties with the Eastern Kunwinjku who own Mermaid Dreaming sites in the freshwater country upstream from Djomi.
Small streams from the Djomi site carry fresh water into the mouth of the Liverpool River. In many paintings of Djomi these streams are shown and it is believed that all watercourses in the Maningrida district are controlled by the power of the Djomi sacred site. Djomi is seem as a metaphor for the cultural network of the Maningrida area, and so gives its name to the Maningrida Museum, the community’s cultural keeping place.
Text courtesy of the Djomi Museum, Maningrida.
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Burarr (Water Monitor)
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.
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Emus eating quandongs
In this painting Dorothy has painted two emus and their chicks eating quandongs or native peach (red dots) from the quandong tree. The birds in the sky have quandongs in their beaks as they also enjoy eating the fruit. Quandongs were a traditionally a significant food source for Yarnangu in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands.
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Untitled
This work portrays an area known to the artist, painted here from memory. During the pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) era one’s survival depended on their intimate knowledge of the location of resources; thus physical elements of Country, such as sources of kapi (water), tali (sandhills), and different varieties of warta (trees, vegetation) were carefully observed and remembered. Today, this relationship with Country remains equally strong, despite the movement of Martu out of the desert and into remote Aboriginal communities, towns and cities.
Also visible may be traces of life cycles based around kalyu (rain, water) and waru (fire). A thousands of year old practice, fire burning continues to be carried out as both an aid for hunting and a means of land management today. As the Martu travelled and hunted they would burn tracts of land, ensuring plant and animal biodiversity and reducing the risk of unmanageable, spontaneous bush fires. The patchwork nature of regrowth is visible in many landscape works, with each of the five distinctive phases of fire burning visually described with respect to the cycle of burning and regrowth.
Finally, metaphysical information relating to a location may also be recorded; Jukurrpa (Dreaming) narratives chronicle the creation of physical landmarks, and can be referenced through depictions of ceremonial sites, songlines, and markers left in the land.
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Woven Stingray
Yolŋu weavers of Arnhem Land craft both utilitarian and ceremonial objects using naturally sourced materials, with more recent works also including decorative pieces, such as this woven stingray.
The primary material used in this piece is the young, green leaves of the Pandanus spiralis tree, that were harvested using a long wooden hook. The leaves are stripped of their prickles, with the smaller fibres being dried to produce a strong, resilient material. These fibres are then twisted, coiled, or combined using various techniques to create this motif of a stingray, an important totem for Yolŋu people of Central Arnhem Land.
Bula’bula weavers exclusively use natural dyes, derived from locally sourced roots, leaves and grasses. These pigments are extracted and infused into pandanus fibres by boiling over an open fire, producing the rich, vibrant colours characteristic of contemporary Yolŋu weavings.