DAWIDI

Painted  at Milingimbi, Crocodile Islands, Central Arnhem Land in the late 1960s
Private collection

The bark is in good condition for a painting from this period. There are two small holes near each corner which have been used as a hanging system in the past, two of which are still threaded with wire. The majority of these holes have created fine splits in the bark. There is a crack through the bark, approximately 10cm long in the top right hand corner and two further holes at each side of the central edges. The majority of the pigments are in sound condition although there are small areas of pigment loss throughout the bark with areas of white pigment being the worst effected
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Cf. For similar paintings of the Wagilag Sisters by Dawidi, see Wagilag Creation Story, 1963, in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, and Wagilag Creation Story and the thundercloud before the first wet season, 1965, in Caruana, W. and N. Lendon (eds.), The Painters of the Wagilag Sisters Story: 1937-1997, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1997, pp.44-45, pl.14-15 respectively; Wagilag Sisters myth, c.1968, in Mundine, D. et al, They are Meditating: Bark paintings from the MCA's Arnott's Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2008, p.100; and The Wagilag Story – The Singing Sticks, c.1960, in O'Ferrall, M.A., Keepers of the Secrets: Aboriginal Art from Arnhemland in the Collection of the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 1990, p.62, pl.68, illus.

This is an archetypal image of the Wagilag Sisters chronicle, painted by the senior ritual leader of related ceremonies at the time of its creation. The central feature of the painting is Wititj the Python emerging from its waterhole to surround and swallow the Sisters and their children. The remaining elements depicted include the rain cloud of the first monsoon in the upper left, stars, creatures caught by the Sisters for food, the sand palm at the site emerging from the semi-circular waterhole, the dots of rain, and the footprints of the Sisters as they danced and sang in an effort to prevent Wititj from attacking them.