Birlmu dja Buluwana
Birlmu – barramundi
Buluwana – Mimih spirit
Sister artists, Apphia Wurrkidj and Jennifer Wurrkidj have collaborated on this beautiful work.
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Bolung
Bolung (Rainbow Serpent) is from the sacred country of Dukala- Djarranj. This is the country of Jay’s grandparent and a place of great significance, as Bolung, the Rainbow Serpent, travelled through the landscape. Rock art in the area depicts a rotund Bolung.
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Eiffel tower and the Maladj spirit
“I want to tell you about my design, that Eiffel tower one.
This year it was my first time going to Paris. I didn’t know that place, nothing. We travelled around the world to get there, we flew underneath the world in an aeroplane.
Paris was a big, crowded city. They speak a different language there, just like here in Maningrida with all our different languages.
The Bábbarra artists and Ingrid, we were all walking around, like tourists. We went on the boat in the Paris river. There was a film crew taking videos of us. We saw so many beautiful buildings covered with black string (iron balconies) and big statues. We’d never seen things like that before.
I remember when we got off that boat and I looked up and saw that tower. When I first looked up at that tower, it made me happy- it’s so long up into the sky. We walked towards it. I was standing there watching that tower and thinking, ‘wow, first time for me seeing a tower like that’.
Then I was thinking, and I said to myself, when I go back to my own country, I’m going to paint that tower.
We came to Maningrida, I started to draw. I drew that tower from France, but also I drew maladj (stone country orphan spirit), women’s sacred woven mat, fish traps and rolk (insects). I also put round kunngol (clouds) in the design, those circles. That maladj spirit, it’s standing there next to the Eiffel tower, looking at the dancing lights at night. The tower is from Paris, but everything else in my design I took from my mother’s country and my father’s country.
Maybe one day I’ll travel back to France, and take my design with me to show them, all the French mob.” Janet Marawarr
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Lorrkkon – Marilyn James
Marilyn’s first screen print design depicts the story of lorrkkon (hollow funeral logs). This the story of her great, great grandfather and grandmother who were bark painters, as well as also sacred lorrkkon painters.
When designing this screen print, Marilyn was remembering her childhood living in a small house on Liverpool river Ngar-wunja (Thompson hole) with other families.
Through the painting process, Marilyn remembered and relived the times when people still lived permanently on remote homelands, living off the land before balanda (non-indigenous people) arrived.
Marilyn recalls “it makes me think back, we did lots of things, some people was hunting, some was weaving, some was painting barks and lorrkkon. As my great, great grandfather and grandmother was painters, I painted this my story for them.”
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Manbirrbbirr dja Kunwardde – major work
Manbirrbbirr dja Kunwardde In Kuninjku the name manbirrbbirr is used for a number of densely flowering shrubs and small trees including Verticordia cunninghamii, yellow flowering Austromyrtus species and also Acacia platycarpa which also has dense white. Kunwardde means stone, rock or money in Kuninjku. The striking yellow – gold hue comes from the root oft of the man-kurdudjumuk (coelospermum reticulatum) which has been harvested from the sandy country near the flood plains. This laborious and tiring process requires digging up the entire shrub. The root is shaven into a pot of water and the colour is released into waster through boiling. Sister artists, Apphia Wurrkidj and Jennifer Wurrkidj have collaborated on this beautiful work.
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Jabiru and Manbirrbbirr
Manbirrbbirr – In Kuninjku the name manbirrbbirr is used for a number of densely flowering shrubs and small trees including Verticordia cunninghamii, yellow flowering Austromyrtus species and also Acacia platycarpa which also has dense white.
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Manbirrbbirr dja Kunwardde – major work
Manbirrbbirr dja Kunwardde In Kuninjku the name manbirrbbirr is used for a number of densely flowering shrubs and small trees including Verticordia cunninghamii, yellow flowering Austromyrtus species and also Acacia platycarpa which also has dense white. Kunwardde means stone, rock or money in Kuninjku. The striking yellow – gold hue comes from the root oft of the man-kurdudjumuk (coelospermum reticulatum) which has been harvested from the sandy country near the flood plains. This laborious and tiring process requires digging up the entire shrub. The root is shaven into a pot of water and the colour is released into waster through boiling. Sister artists, Apphia Wurrkidj and Jennifer Wurrkidj have collaborated on this beautiful work.
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Morning Star
The ceremony known throughout Arnhem Land generically as Marradjiri is a ceremony of diplomacy given by one group to another to establish good relations and to strengthen kinship (for example by marriage) and economic ties (for example the sharing of clan estate resources).
The central object in the Marradjiri ceremony is a decorated polepainted with clan designs. The work on the pole is undertaken as part of the ceremony and is accompanied by the associated song series.
Often the ceremony commences when one group invites another and the people invited perform the Marradjiri. When a child finds their first bush food or object of value it is taken as a sign that the Marradjiri ceremony should be performed and an invitation is sent out sometimes in the form of a lock of hair from this child or in the form of some other token, sometimes encased in beeswax and wrapped in cloth. The token is delivered to the invited performers who then prepare to give the ceremony to their hosts at the residence of the host group.
Each evening before sunset the performance begins and continues for two or three hours. In the early stages of the ceremony the dancers perform with body clan designs which become progressively more elaborate as the time approaches the end of the ceremony. Usually this may take two or three weeks.
In the Marradjiri, the pole is said to represent a mast of a Makassan prau. There exists many loan words (over three hundred in total) in North Australian Aboriginal languages and one of these is the Makassan word for mast of a ship ‘palayarrang’ which has changed in some Maningrida languages to ‘bulayarrang’ and a few other variations.
It is possible that the name of this ceremony has its origins in the Makassan word for mast. The Marradjiri ceremony is influenced heavily by Makassan themes.
On the final night of the ceremony the pole appears out of the darkness on the edge of the camp decorated with feathered tassles and long ropes which represent the rigging of the prau. Dancers hold these ropes and move the pole back and forth in the fashion of a prau rolling in rough sea as depicted. The dancers bring the pole down and dance with it until it is finally presented to the host group with great ritual and the pole is set into the ground to the accompaniment of the head song man chanting through a long list of clan names associated with the travels of creation ancestors.
When the dancers part with the pole they break into mourning as they may have done at the end of each Makassan trepanging season when their Makassan visitors returned to Sulawesi on the new early dry season winds. The pole is then kept by the host group, often being hung from the roof of a dwelling. Text taken from Maningrida Arts and Culture
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Ngalng and Duruk
Ngalng (fresh water yabby)
‘This is a story from Mankorlod. This is a djang story. This is the creation story about the fresh water yabby. Starting with the stone, that’s the raw one and the cooked one. The stone rock suddenly turned to ngalng, in a flash. Ngalng started growing and turned into a body. It’s a magic one and it can change from rock to ngalng to human and back to ngalng. Now it’s a ngalng.
The country is near Mankorlod and Korlobididah. The ngalng is stuck there forever on the rock at Korlobididah,’
‘There is also duruk (camp dog) called ‘Djanbokkon’. This is a duruk that comes from water and no one has seen it. This is a true duruk, he goes everywhere in the country. His body is striped. He is a secret dog and he has a secret story.’
Janet Marawarr 2022
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Yawkyawk (young woman spirit)
Yawkyawk is a word from the Aboriginal Kunwinjku language, meaning ‘young woman’ and ‘young woman spirit being’.
Sometimes compared to the European notion of mermaids, yawkyawks are usually depicted with the tails of fish. They have long hair, associated with trailing blooms of algae, typically found in Arnhem Land streams and rock pools.