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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  Australian Indigenous & Oceanic Art
• Sale Date:
  21 Jul 2015 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  9
• Lot Description:
  John Mawurndjul
  (born 1952)
  Ancestors at Milmilingkan (1993)
  natural earth pigments and synthetic binders on eucalyptus bark
  212 x 77 cm
• Provenance:
  Maningrida Arts & Culture, Northern Territory; Private Collection, Queensland
• Notes:
  Since commencing bark painting in the late 1970s John Mawurndjul's painting career spans almost 40 years. His work led the way in changing perceptions about how Aboriginal visual traditions translate into contemporary art. The artist's constant aesthetic innovations stimulated audiences to see beyond the primitive stereotype and appreciate a creative genius who develops new methods for communicating with a global audience. With contemporary bark painting, the medium is not the message. Mawurndjul draws on a longstanding Aboriginal tradition of painting ochre images on bark taken from trees grown in northern Australian wetlands. But he now uses this medium to communicate with modern audiences, and the message in Ancestors at Milmilingkan (1993) is the continued relevance and presence of ancestral spirits. This is a painting about now, not yesterday. Mawurndjul established an outstation and built a house at Milmilingkan in 1992-1993 and at this time he increased the focus on artworks referencing this location. For outsiders, the significance of these paintings is that the ancestors are still here at Milmilingkan. This is how the artist translates the Dreaming into an authentically contemporary expression of art. His art inculcates outsiders into an Aboriginal perspective of a spiritual ordering of the world that remains relevant for his Kuninjku community today. Ancestors at Milmilingkan (1993) is a refined example of a significant transitional period in Mawurndjul's art practice. The carefully applied cross-hatching that is typical of Western Arnhem Land bark painting, called rarrk, became a more dominant element of the artist's compositions at this time. Different arrangements and colouring of rarrk traditionally identify distinct kinship groups and decorate bodies, and items used in ceremony. Similarly to the dotting of desert painting in Central Australia, rarrk featured in earlier art as patterns within the lines of figures such as human beings, animals, ancestral spirits, and geometric symbols. These figures are the characters of complex narratives that preserve the tenets of the Dreaming, and thus Aboriginal principles of moral and social order. A dimension of this knowledge is restricted to only initiated members of the community, so artists needed a new visual language to accommodate a more generalised symbolism appropriate for international audiences. Similarly to the escalation of dotting in desert painting, Mawurndjul's rarrk took on the role of less specific symbolism in a global context. Mawurndjul himself spoke of this relationship between his innovations with rarrk and cultural restrictions in a 2004 interview with Apolline Kohen, Director of Maningrida Arts and Culture at the time. Mawurndjul said: "Tell those balanda (whitefellas) that it's okay, there is no restriction on looking at my paintings. They can enjoy the paintings but buried inside are secret meanings they don't need to know. My paintings are travelling everywhere now, from Sydney right up to Paris or Germany. Everybody can see them, they can think, learn about my crosshatching. We, the new generation, are taking our culture to far away places where balanda live." (Rarrk, John Mawurndjul, Journey through time in northern Australia, 2005, p. 27). Ancestors at Milmilingkan (1993) exemplifies how figures in Mawurndjul's art begin to subside into a field of rarrk. Barely discernable breasts of the ancestral figures embedded in dense rarrk patterning, signal the withheld, or restricted, dimension of inside knowledge. In later works, rarrk increasingly covers the entire pictorial surface and often functions without any, or few, figurative elements. Every aspect of Mawurndjul's paintings has significance. For instance, the black band running across the rarrk, the small black shapes in the centre of the image, and small and larger circles at the base, all appear in numerous other artworks. This is a carefully orchestrated visual story that works on multiple dimensions for both initiated and outsider audiences. This particular Ancestors at Milmilingkan artwork has remained in an important private Queensland since its completion in 1993. In 1991 Mawurndjul received an Australia Council Professional Development Grant that allowed him to work for 12 months producing a major body of work (of which this is one). Mawurndjul's career experienced a significant spike during this period in the early 1990s. He had his first solo exhibition at Melbourne's Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi in 1993. In the same year his work was exhibited in the 10th National Aboriginal Art Award Exhibition in Darwin and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art exhibition of the Parliament House Collection in Canberra. Internationally, Mawurndjul's art featured in the ground breaking European tour of Aratjara: Art of the First Australians (1993-1994) after showing at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo the previous year. Dr Sally Butler
• Estimate:
  A$70,000 - 100,000
• 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.