Footnotes

• PROVENANCE
  Maningrida Arts and Culture, Maningrida, Northern Territory
  Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne
  Private collection
  
  Mawurndjul was taught by his elder brother Jimmy Njiminjuma with whom he painted collaboratively until the late 1970s. The Yawk Yawk was a regular theme of his brother's paintings and also for Mawurndjul early in his career and into the early 1990s in larger format as in this example. One can see the influence of Njiminjuma in this work where the artist chose to leave the Yawk Yawk's hair white rather than infilling it with rarrk - a technique used to give more definition to the figure. Here it has the effect of a halo lending the figure a 'supernatural' air. The water lillies attached to the archs at either side of the Yawk Yawk's tail may indicate her transformative powers - a motif commonly used by the artist for this reason when depicting Ngalyod, the Rainbow Serpent.