This is a little area called Sand Hill Camp. It’s a little area for family at Ntaria (Hermannsburg). We used to live there, but now we live in Mparntwe . Other family still live there. Sometimes we go like for funeral we’ll go round the Sand Hill Camp to visit families.
Hawks and Magpies playing football long long time ago, no more at Titjikala
Every time we go out for the day, the women go for walk to look for goanna while the rest of the families wait back at the camp making fire ready to cook it. The crows hang around waiting for the scraps from the goanna.
There is a creek that flows from Areyonga to Illari Spring. When it has water horses come to drink – there are bullocks and camels – too many – all drinking from the creek. This is my country – Tempe Downs.
This is the Titjikala road and we were heading to Alice Springs for shopping. We sitting down, having water and sandwiches. That white car is headed to Titjikala and the other direction is Alice Springs. We leave early in the morning, fuel up at Maryvale Station. In the afternoon we go back to Titjikala and arrive in the night time. We get lollies and cool drink for the kids in Alice springs.
Minkulpa (bush tobacco) plant growing, the leaves are ready to pick, dry them out and then they are ready. Lots of minkulpa growing after the rain.
The family went out picnic, digging for witchetty grubs. Birds are flying around, looking at the people. This is my country, near Tempe Downs, everyone is happy being out on country.
The family went out picnic, digging for honey ants. Two women hunted a goanna, someone about to make a fire. Kids are playing and looking for Tjurrka (wild fig) to eat. Birds are flying around, looking at the people. Young boy having a nap under the tree. This is my country, near Tempe Downs, everyone is happy being out on country.
On weekend we went to Amata and we was traveling and we pull up and saw bush fire. Family get up and see all the fire burning, shouting, and some people are coming that way and they saw the bush fire burning and they get up on top of the car and shouting again, ‘Waru!’ (Fire!). Then we went back home to homeland, Cave Hill. some people going back to Pukatja (Ernabella) and other people going back to Amata. Nighttime, the sun go down, sunset is nice. Bush fire, it had been a hot day. We were travelling in the afternoon, we came back from Pukatja where we was watching the football and saw the fire. Long time (ago).
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.