Balang Nakurulk

(John Mawurndjul AM) (1952-2024)

Untitled, 1988

Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Maningrida Arts & Crafts, Maningrida, Northern Territory
Private collection, Melbourne
Sotheby's, Sydney, 15 October 2012, lot 90
The Sarick Collection, Canada

The following research is drawn from the important monograph on the artist, John Mawurndjul: I am the old and the new, prepared by the Museum of Cotemporary Art, Sydney, in 2018. Within the catalogue, we benefit from a detailed overview of the artist's practice over the years. Of 1988, the year this work was painted, much took place;

'Described as 'a watershed in the evolution of Mawurndjul's iconography', this year sees the artist's work in exhibitions across the country and overseas.

Two lorrkkon (hollow logs) by Mawurndjul are included in The Aboriginal Memorial (1987-88), an installation of 200 hollow log coffins that honours Indigenous people who have died defending their Country since 1788. The Aboriginal Memorial is displayed within the seventh Biennale of Sydney, curated by Nick Waterlow and titled the Australian Biennale 1988, From the Southern Cross: A View of World Art с.1940-1988. The Aboriginal Memorial is acquired by the Australian National Gallery collection in Canberra to mark the nation's bicentenary.

Mawurndjul features in his first solo exhibition, with his paintings shown alongside objects from Maningrida. The exhibition, Maningrida: An exhibition of weaving and carvings from the community of Maningrida and paintings on bark by John Mawandjul, is presented by Garry Anderson Gallery, Sydney, over 7-21 May.

Mawurndjul and Njiminjuma travel with Maningrida Arts and Crafts art advisor Diane Moon to Australian public institutions that hold their work. They visit Museum Victoria and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, the Australian National Gallery in Canberra, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia site office in Sydney. Moon recalls: 'Seeing the reverence and care afforded their paintings was revelatory for the artists. In Sydney they were welcomed at the small site office for the proposed MCA by its then joint directors Bernice Murphy and Leon Paroissien'. Impressed by the plans for the museum, Mawurndjul paints Ngalyod (Female Rainbow Serpent) (1988) and Nawarramulmul (Shooting Star Spirit) (1988) for the MCA collection.

On 28 August George Chaloupka opens the Gunwinggu Artists exhibition. The show is part of the first international Australian Rock Art Research Association congress in Darwin, which Mawurndjul, lyuna, Namirrkki and Njiminjuma attend, accompanied by Diane Moon and linguist and teacher Murray Garde. Their bark paintings are exhibited within the Beaufort Hotel's convention centre and the Darwin Performing Arts Centre gallery, on display until 7 September. Mawurndjul's barks, Moon explains, were painted for the 'informed local and international audience'; they 'became monumental in scale to accommodate the powerful imagery through which Mawurndjul could convey the intensity of his feelings for this ancient source of cultural knowledge'. One such bark is the 2-metre tall Namanjwarre, Saltwater Crocodile (1988), purchased after the exhibition by the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.

Two weeks later at the fifth National Aboriginal Art Award (now the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards), Mawurndjul wins the Rothmans Foundation Award for the best painting in traditional media for his work Ngalyod (1988). The award is presented by the Northern Territory Museum of Arts and Sciences, Darwin, and the painting is acquired by the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.

At over two meters in height, MAGNT's Ngalyod is indicative of the artist's larger bark paintings depicting the Rainbow Serpent in 'evermore complex figurative arrangements'. Luke Taylor explains, 'Mawurndjul's experimentation with paintings of Ngalyod that can be conceived as maps reveal a broader concern for paintings of Country, of the way that Country can be conceived as transformations of the ancestral essence, and of expressions of these powers that exist in landscape'.

In October, the exhibition Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia opens at the Asia Society Galleries in New York. It includes Mawurndjul's c.1986 bark painting Lightning Figure from the collection of the South Australian Museum (SAM), Adelaide. Curated by Peter Sutton, Dreamings is presented in association with SAM and tours to the David and Alfred Smart Gallery at the University of Chicago, then to Los Angeles, Melbourne and Adelaide.'