Maningrida Arts & Culture

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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. 

 

 

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Gomarla (Egret bird)

The artist has carved the ‘Gomarla’, which in the Burarra word for Egret. This bird is native to the country of Yilan, which is the coastal region North West of Maningrida Community. 

People use feathers from gomarla to make ceremonial regalia for Yirrichinga. Many Yirrichinga groups own manikay ‘song’ for gomarla.

Gomarla mun-baparrurr Gopungorra. Jin-gubatbatcha jin-banga jiny-yorkiya. Gomarla waykin makukuya mu-guyinda.

The egret belongs to the Gopungorra clan. It always eats grasshoppers. The egret is high in a nest (builds its nest in the tree).

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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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Warraburnburn

In Burarra and Gun-nartpa languages the figure represented in this artwork is generally known as a wangarra ‘ghost spirit’. For the Warrawarra clan ghost spirits have their own particular characteristics and their own name – Warraburnburn.

The Warraburnburn and the closely related Galabarrbarr spirit (owned by the Balkarranga clan) are also manikay song topics.  The spirits are related to each other as maternal grandparent and grandchild, just as the people of Warrawarra and Balkarranga are. The dancing of the two ghost spirit figures forms the finale performance for funerals, and is the final goodbye to a deceased family member.

In many ways the Warraburnburn and Galabarrbarr ghost spirits are like people. They emerge from the patches of jungle on Warrawarra and Balkarranga country in the late afternoon and go hunting in family groups of men, women and children. They stay in contact with each other by calling out as the men hunt for fish and the women walk with their dillybags looking for vegetable food. 

The ghost spirits are associated closely with white ochre and artists commonly paint the bodies of carved figures in white. Different types of ghost spirit wear different patterns. Warraburnburn is decorated with uniform white dots while others are painted white all over. Some ghost spirits are shown with a design painted on their chest infilled with rarrk ‘cross-hatching’, the same designs that are painted onto japi an-guyinda ‘male initiations’. 

They also have supernatural characteristics including superhuman size (jarra anbaykarda ‘super tall’). They know the country intimately – some are malevolent towards humans and will lead people astray, taking them to unfamiliar and dangerous places. These malevolent spirits are likened to an-muburda ‘sorcerers’ and can conduct dangerous rituals that cause harm to people. Others are benign and will lead humans back to familiar paths and their own camps.

 

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Wayuk or Nguyno (flower)

Works in fibre from the Maningrida region are widely recognised as some of the finest in Australia. Artists confidently push the boundaries of fibre craft and cultural expression, adapting traditional techniques and forms to produce strikingly inventive and aesthetically exquisite artworks. In 2003, Kuninjku artist Marina Murdilnga brought a revolutionary new form of pandanus weaving to Maningrida Arts & Culture: a flat yawkyawk made from knotted pandanus on a jungle-vine frame, painted with natural pigments. She next explored using dyed pandanus and feathers in this way. Murdilnga’s innovation inspired many other weavers, who are producing an array of beautifully resolved flat figurative works (stingray, butterflies, spiderwebs) and spiritual figures and Ancestral beings. Alongside Murdilnga, leading artists of this form of fibre art are Anniebell Marnngamarnnga, Frewa Bardaluna and Rembarrnga artists Vera Cameron and Maisie Cameron. Lulu Larandjbi has woven interpretations of the rock pools at Kobumi where Ngalyod (the Rainbow Serpent) entered and died. Commonly used fibres include the leaves of pandanus (Pandanus spiralis), and palms (Livistonus), mírlírl (burney or jungle vine, Malaisia scandens), and the inner bark of kurrajong and stringybark eucalyptus trees. Weaving is physically hard work, now done only by women. They colour the pandanus using natural dyes made from the roots, leaves or flowers of plants within the weaver’s clan estate. The same dye bath is often used to dye a number of batches of fibre, with variations in the colours depending on the time spent in the dye bath and the potency of the bath. The women skilfully use salt and wood ash as mordants and colour enhancers.

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Birlmu or Namarnkorl (Barramundi)

It is well known that Aboriginal art often depicts images of sacred totems or dreamings of Aboriginal culture. However, the world of the non-sacred also provides a rich source of subject matter for Aboriginal art. Much of the rock art of western Arnhem Land for example features secular topics such as common food animals and plants, depicted because of their economic importance but also merely because of their existence in the environment. The artist has depicted ‘birlmu’ or ‘namarnkorl’ (Barramundi [Lates calcarifer]). During the dry season the barramundi is an important food source for inland Aboriginal people. These fish are caught throughout the artist’s clan estate, either in fishtraps woven from pandanus or sedge grass, or else hunted with spears and fishing lines in billabongs and streams where they shelter from the sun under fallen logs or amongst the leaves of water plants.

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Diving Duck – GorrpurdaDuck – Gorrpurda

This artist has painted designs for two clans: Mapuy and Warrawarra. These are both Yirrichinga clans from the eastern bank of the Blyth River area in north-central Arnhem Land. These two clans are closely related and share a number of sites. One site they share is called Ji-gapala, where there is a dreaming for gorrpurda ‘diver duck’.

Gorrpurda travelled from the east, creating the landscape and naming clans as she went. She travelled across the land and underground in the same way that the diver duck dives from the air into the water, swims a long way underneath and then emerges from the water back into the air. She came from Mapuy clan and entered the ground at Ji-gapala, where she transformed into Warrawarra clan. The unity of the two clans is conveyed in this work with the combination of the diver duck emblem for Mapuy and the rectangular cross-hatched motif of Warrawarra.