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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  The Alan Boxer Collection of Australian Indigenous Art
• Sale Date:
  17 Mar 2015 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  18
• Lot Description:
  Ginger Riley Munduwalawala
  (Circa 1927–2002)
  Sacred Liver Tree (1991)
  synthetic polymer on linen
  125 x 125 cm
  bears Alcaston Gallery cat. no. AK1030 verso
• Provenance:
  Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne; Chapman Gallery, Canberra; The Alan Boxer Collection, Canberra
• Notes:
  Sacred Liver Tree appears as a compendium of Munduwalawala's favourite subjects and iconography. The landscape is situated in his mother's country, the Limmen Bight River that flows into the Gulf of Carpentaria, and the spectacular rock formations of the Four Archers some fifty kilometers up-river. In this painting, the Four Archers sit in the middle of the composition: above them is an image of Bulukbun, the angry fire breathing 'serpent-dragon' (Ryan, J., Ginger Riley, Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 1997, p.30) who is depicted in the act of devouring a turtle (a metaphor perhaps for transformation). Bulukbun is shown against a blue sky which is framed by a series of red chevrons that refer to ritual body painting designs. A cluster of snakes and their eggs appear below the Four Archers. To the right is an image of Ngak Ngak the Sea Eagle, Munduwalawala's 'alter ego', witnessing these ancestral events unfold. However the focus of this painting is the Shark's Liver Tree that appears at the centre of the lower register of the painting, flanked by two brown snakes. The iconograph of tree and snakes is an analogue of a ceremonial construction made of paperbark and used in circumcision rituals. Ngak Ngak and the Four Archers, 1993, in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, (a detail of which is illustrated in Ryan 1997:93 Figure 52, and illustrated in full on the Gallery's website at http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/work/55035/), is another painting by Munduwalawala that features the same set of symbols and figures. The comparison between it and Sacred Liver Tree yields an insight into the intentions of the artist. In the former painting, the Shark's Liver Tree is small in scale and depicted off centre to the right, while the Four Archers, Ngak Ngak and Bulukbun dominate the composition. In Sacred Liver Tree, the ceremonial construction is placed in the middle of the foreground of the picture to emphasize its centrality to the theme of the painting. Wally Caruana
• Estimate:
  A$14,000 - 18,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.