This auction has ended. View lot details
You may also be interested in
Lot 10
Lin Onus(1948-1996)Wamut and Warru, 1989
26 August 2025, 18:00 AEST
SydneySold for AU$54,120 inc. premium
Looking for a similar item?
Our Australian Art specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.
Find your local specialistAsk about this lot
Alex Clark
Head of Sale, Senior Specialist
Merryn Schriever
Managing Director, Australia
Lin Onus (1948-1996)
Wamut and Warru, 1989
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
91.5 x 111.5cm (36 x 43 7/8in).
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
91.5 x 111.5cm (36 x 43 7/8in).
Footnotes
PROVENANCE
Painters Gallery, Sydney
Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above on 6 February 1990
EXHIBITED
Paintings and Sculpture by Lin Onus, Painters Gallery, Sydney, May – June 1990
Growing up in Melbourne with a Yorta Yorta father from Cummeragunja in New South Wales and a mother of Scottish descent, Lin Onus was preoccupied by a sense of not 'belonging'. He had no ancestral or cultural ties to the white, middle-class Melbourne suburb he grew up in, experiencing frequent incidences of racism which escalated to physical altercations at school and were the catalyst for his eventual expulsion. Thanks to the tireless work that his parents, Bill Onus and Mary McLintock Kelly were doing as determined political campaigners for social change, Onus was inspired to find his own public voice through art.1
Onus' father Bill and uncle, Aaron Briggs, were important influences in educating him on Indigenous heritage and through regular trips to their ancestral homeland of Cummeragunja and Barmah Forest on the Murray River, Onus developed deep spiritual ties which would inform his work. Another significant journey in his exploration of his Indigenous identity came through a trip to Maningrida in Arnhem Land in 1986 where Onus was to make a lifelong and deeply important connection with bark painter and respected elder, Jack Wunuwun. In recognition of the close ties that would develop, Wunuwun adopted Onus into the Murrungun Djinang clan. Wunuwun was an innovative painter who drew on European influences and 'firmly believed that art was a powerful means by which to reconcile Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia'.2
Through his influence, Onus further developed his own stylistic language incorporating Indigenous and European elements and iconography which are the hallmarks of his oeuvre. Wamut and Warru features a young Tikiri, Onus' son, following a trip to Maningrida with his father. Wamut is the Dhuwa skin name given to Tiriki by Jack Wunuwun with whom he enjoyed a close bond. Warru is the campfire, itself a powerful and elegant force.
On the opening night of the Painters Gallery exhibition where this work featured, Onus described how, around a campfire one night he was struck by the significance of the journey that he had taken with his son. Tikiri had received traditional teachings in Maningrida represented by the fire, which had been passed down through generations from the ever-present Ancestors, represented by the blue dots in the sky, always in the background. Their wisdom can be accessed through Ceremony and teachings.3
1. Frances Lindsay, Lin Onus: Yinya Wala, exhibition catalogue, 2016, p. 6
2. Wally Caruana, Old Masters: Australia's Great Bark Artists, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2013, p. 231
3. Recollection of the present owner in conversation with the artist