Curators’ introduction

_{by Clothilde Bullen, Natasha Bullock, Nici Cumpston, Keith Munro and Lisa Slade}

The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) and the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) have much in common. It is this commonality, specifically their respective holdings of works by John Mawurndjul, that provides the deep wellspring for this project – from the two barks that formed the newly inaugurated MCA collection in 1989,¹ and which were included in the landmark Magiciens de la terre exhibition in France the same year, to the AGSA bark from 1988 that represents a watershed moment in the evolution of Mawurndjul’s aesthetic.²

Nonetheless, the slow-burn methodology underpinning collections and their development is different from the task of generating exhibitions, particularly ones that look retrospectively through 40 years of an artist’s practice. While our respective collections were the spark that lit the fire of this project, it has been our visits to Mawurndjul’s home in Arnhem Land, in and around Maningrida, and the collaborative work between artist, translator, art centre, family members, curators and educators that have realised this project.

Several visits to the Northern Territory (and many Skype sessions between all parties) have been facilitated and sustained by trust and excitement for the project. During our first trip north we journeyed overland to Milmilngkan, where we spent time with Mawurndjul and his family at his outstation, which is adjacent to a creek on a tributary of the Tomkinson River. This place has been a source of great creative energy for Mawurndjul. There are many paintings in this exhibition that suggest the creeks and waterholes at Milmilngkan, and the spring where water bubbles up through the ground in the open space of a pandanus grove. As Mawurndjul explained to us: “That water is from where the Rainbow Serpent pierced the ground.”³

Further places of great significance to Mawurndjul were visited on our second trip to Maningrida. He permits few people to visit these places and so we ventured forth with great anticipation. Bundled into two troop carriers we drove straight to Ngandarrayo, where Mawurndjul explained the story of Buluwana and showed us Djang – a sacred place where the bones of his Ancestors are buried – as well as many examples of rock art. We travelled to Kudjarnngal and the white-clay mines where Mawurndjul sources his pigment, then to Kakodbebuldi, his mother’s Country, which is near the Mann River upstream from Mumeka. Kakodbebuldi is a Mardayin place with a large billabong that has inspired numerous paintings by Mawurndjul, particularly the sacred dangarrk from the Mardayin ceremony, where white and blue lights glow at night under the water, and where the interference of the animals makes the lights flash. We finished our trip across Country at Kudjidmi, home of the ornate burrowing frogs known as yibba.

It was during this second trip that Mawurndjul described the structure of this exhibition. He wanted the works to be grouped by moiety – duwa and yirridjdja – and then to follow a path through the kunred (places) of his Country. Mimih spirits were to be presented together, lorrkkon as a group, and the etchings were to be in their own space because they are, in Mawurndjul’s words, a “western thing”. We spent three days chatting and sharing stories – including looking over the hundreds of pictures of his work that had been researched and gathered over the previous few months – and under Mawurndjul’s direction determined the most powerful works from his long career.

Mawurndjul explained to us the different cross-hatching associated with his moiety: “I do my cross-hatching. Ours is for the duwa moiety … I don’t do the very small fine cross-hatching, that is for the yirridjdja moiety people.” He also explained how he determines if a bark “has power”: “When I paint the cross-hatching, I take the bark and I put it in the bush where there are lots of trees … I walk away and I come back and I look at it to see if there’s movement in it. Is it moving? Is there shimmer in it? That’s the power of the rarrk. If it does, I am happy.” We gained further insights into the ideas and contexts that inform Mawurndjul’s art and together began to imagine this exhibition taking shape. Yet, in all, this has been an artist-led project, underpinned by Mawurndjul’s belief that regardless of where you come from – Aboriginal or balanda – “We make art, and it’s all powerful. Everybody.”

From this significant starting point we journeyed further through an archive of artworks, images and exhibitions. It is in this way that the development and delivery of John Mawurndjul: I am the old and the new has traversed Country and cultures. All these visits to Maningrida are latent without the energy of the artist being there with you. Working closely with Mawurndjul, each place is brought to life as he responds with immediacy and animation to particular works of art and locations.

The concept of kunred, or place, is difficult to express in the English language but is readily conveyed in Mawurndjul’s work, both in the materials he uses – Stringybark (Eucalyptus tetrodonta) and natural pigments and ochre mined directly from the earth – and his representation of concepts critical to the understanding of Kuninjku culture. This natural, circular rhythm of life, the growing and gathering of knowledge and the rituals of lifecycles have permeated every aspect of the development of this exhibition.

Country supports culture, within which is embedded all cultural and artistic experience, which, for Mawurndjul, consequently takes place both in the natural material forms found on and in Country and through language. Each thing is connected to everything else. It is omnipresent in the way things have happened in the way they were meant to happen, despite best intentions or schedules, and it has also played out in the way the very design of this exhibition is articulated. As Mawurndjul’s cultural knowledge has grown, so his practice has changed and its elements refined, finessed into one of the finest forms of Kuninjku cultural expression the world has seen.

Language is a critical component of John Mawurndjul: I am the old and the new. Although the idea of bilingualism is not new, the extent to which it has been embedded in both the exhibition spaces and in this publication is unprecedented. The design of the exhibition and the design of this book are intimately connected, again following the notion that each thing belongs to every other thing, and all are inexorably linked. It is through language that we are guided to see the world in the way that Mawurndjul sees his world, and his artistic practice is an extension of this non-verbal form of communication. His bark paintings have an indisputable elegance and energy, exemplified by their completeness of vision and materials.

This energy has extended palpably to this project from the artist, to his wife and collaborator, Kay Lindjuwanga, who has been pivotal in affirming and sharing ideas and experiences. Furthermore, each conversation relies on a constellation of voices, all dependent on the talents of Murray Garde – a linguist and close friend of Mawurndjul’s – and Michelle Culpitt, General Manager, Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation in Maningrida, who has worked tirelessly to support Mawurndjul’s vision and our collaboration. Working together in response to Mawurndjul’s cues has dissolved the vast distances between Maningrida, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide.

This creativity and intercultural activity is not unique. It is a daily reality in Maningrida where the art centre, Maningrida Arts and Culture (MAC), is the nexus for visits and myriad activities involving artists, artworkers and community members, and even – as we saw on one occasion – a political delegation platforming ahead of an election. As many ‘roads’ lead out of Maningrida as in. Local artists are busy travelling to capital cities for exhibitions and projects. This activity continues down the road from MAC at the Bábbarra Women’s Centre, the printmaking and textiles studio established in 1983, and at the Djómi Museum, established in the 1970s, which houses an important historical collection of local artists’ work.

Mawurndjul shared with us the importance of these organisations to the livelihood of his community. The respect Mawurndjul has for his elders, and their influence on his life and career, are palpable when one visits the Djómi Museum in his company. Likewise, when we were together with Mawurndjul at the Bábbarra Women’s Centre, he expressed great pride in its establishment and impressed upon us the importance of enabling everyone in the community to have a place to make art.

Fortuitously, in March 2018 Nici Cumpston was with Mawurndjul in Germany for an exhibition in which they were both participating – Indigenous Australia: Masterworks from the National Gallery of Australia – at me Collectors Room, Berlin. They spent time in a number of museums and, with Murray Garde interpreting, were able to share their thoughts about art and culture. It was a refreshing dialogue and a reminder that, even so far from his home, Mawurndjul is an artist who thinks deeply about the role of art and ideas, and is fascinated by how works of art are brought to the world and how the world is held within them.

First published in C Bullen, N Bullock, N Cumpston, K Munro and L Slade, “Curators’ afterword”, John Mawurndjul: I am the old and the new, Natasha Bullock (editor), exhibition catalogue, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2018. 

1. Nawarramulul (Shooting Star Spirit) (1988) and Ngalyod (Female Rainbow Serpent) (1988), exhibition catalogue, pp 233 and 185.
2. Namanjwarre, Saltwater Crocodile (1988), exhibition catalogue, p 231.
3. All quotes are from conversations with the artist, translated by Murray Garde, 2016–18.