The women of Maningrida and surrounding homelands use a combination of locally found seeds, bone and shells to make a variety of jewellery including necklaces. earrings and bracelets. Many of the artists use complex patterns and designs to make their beautiful creations.
The women of Maningrida and surrounding homelands use a combination of locally found seeds, bone and shells to make a variety of jewellery including necklaces. earrings and bracelets. Many of the artists use complex patterns and designs to make their beautiful creations.
The women of Maningrida and surrounding homelands use a combination of locally found seeds, bone and shells to make a variety of jewellery including necklaces. earrings and bracelets. Many of the artists use complex patterns and designs to make their beautiful creations.
The women of Maningrida and surrounding homelands use a combination of locally found seeds, bone and shells to make a variety of jewellery including necklaces. earrings and bracelets. Many of the artists use complex patterns and designs to make their beautiful creations.
The women of Maningrida and surrounding homelands use a combination of locally found seeds, bone and shells to make a variety of jewellery including necklaces. earrings and bracelets. Many of the artists use complex patterns and designs to make their beautiful creations.
This painting depicts two goannas embedded in an intricate depiction of gungara, the mini cyclones common during the wet season in Arnhem Land. Gungara 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.
In the mythology or dreaming history of the Ganalbingu and Gurrgurrdjunggu peoples, two sisters who were the human forms of barnda ‘the Long-neck Turtle’ (Chelodina rugosa) came travelling a long distance from the east towards Ganalbingu country in Central Arnhem Land. They travelled through Martay country arriving at a place called Ji-malawa, the site today of a homeland/outstation community in the Blyth River district. At this place they turned their speech to the Burarra language and named sites as they travelled. The two Barnda sisters continued their journey to Gamardi, a site in Djinang country and they again changed their language to a dialect of Djinang called Wulagi.
Barnda is also Bulunbulun’s personal ‘Dreaming’ given to him by his father who was walking in the swamp at the time of the artist’s birth.
While discussing the painting’s imagery, Bulunbulun explained that some components were the domain of ‘inside’ or secret ceremonial meaning and therefore he could only describe the ‘outside’ or public aspects of them.
In the painting Bulunbulun depicts the passage of the barnda through the country and the locations where the long neck turtle stopped to create features in the landscape in the Dreamtime. The two black circular forms are ngambul ‘a waterhole’ formed by barnda. The two horizontal bands of rarrk ‘crosshatching’ in the midlle and upper section of the painting are marwurru ‘a paperbark log’ over which barnda walked along the journey. The large areas of rarrk represent gurrwiling ‘the swamp’ created by barnda. The vertical swaying lines are gunbuluru and wuye different types of reeds that are so sharp that they can cut one legs when walking through the swamp. At the top of the painting above the head of the image of the turtle is a band of rarrk, which represents the view of the plain country and swamp from a hill.
Kuninjku people traditionally make two sorts of conical fish traps. One called Mandjabu made from milil a vine. And another smaller one called manyilk Mandjabu, made from the grass manylik. The milil conical fish trap is bigger and stronger and used in tidal reaches of creeks to catch large fish. the smaller and lighter manylik trap is used in freshwater flowing creeks to catch smaller fish and freshwater prawns. Traditionally only men were involved in the construction of the large fish traps, but smaller children were used to crawl inside and assist.
The images in this painting refer to a site in the clan estate of the artist, at a place called Dirdbim which literally means ‘image of the moon’. The site is a large, unusually round hole in sandstone, residual on the plain not far from the Mann River. Mick Kubarkku is an artist well known for his paintings of the full and new moons, the sun and the stars. He also taught several family members to paint this important dreaming. Here Lulu Laradjbi, Mick Kubarrkus’s wife, has painted the full and new moon called dird bukkulurl and lirrk kurrmeng in the Eastern Kunwinjku language.
The large hole is said to be the full moon created by the rainbow serpent Ngalyod, who pierced the rock in times of the ‘dreaming’ and left the shape of the full moon. Dirdbim is not far from the artists’ residence today at Yikarrakkal and the area is rich in rock art and old camping sites. As well there are numerous human remains, bones wrapped up in paper bark and older remains lying in clefts of sandstone shelters. The Eastern Kunwinjku people of the district have always used Dirdbim as a mortuary site because of the mythological history of the area which is connected to the moon story. This is because the mythology of the moon ancestor relates how his adversary, the spotted quoll, argued with the moon over the fate of humanity. The quoll decided he would die once and once only but the moon took his place in the sky to be reborn each lunar month. Because of this Kubarkku often painted this subject with bones or murrngno surrounding the image, just as human bones surround the actual site at Dirdbim.
The techniques of bark painting are usually handed down from one generation to the next, as are the rights of each artist to a particular site or ‘dreaming’. The similarity between this painting by Laradjbi, and some of her husband’s paintings is a reflection of this process of transmission.
Mats can vary greatly. Artists commonly use a mix of naturally dyed and undyed fibre to create a striking variation of coloured bands. Some artists also incorporate different types of looping to produce different patterns and textured finishes. Each type of mat, fibre bag, basket and dilly bag has its own name in the various languages spoken in the Maningrida region.