JANANGOO BUTCHER CHEREL CIRCA 1920-2009 | Bush Food

Painted in 1992 for Mangkaja Arts, Fitzroy Crossing, Western Australia
Private Collection
Greer Adams Fine Art, Sydney
The Dennis and Debra Scholl Collection, Miami, acquired from the above in 2014

Possibly exhibited at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in 2003 as it bears an AGWA label with accession no. 2003/L116 on the reverse
Nevada, Nevada Museum of Art, No Boundaries: Aboriginal Australian Contemporary Abstract Painting, 13 February to 13 May 2015, and additional venues:
Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, 20 June to 16 August 2015
Pérez Art Museum, Miami, 17 September 2015 to 3 January 2016
Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Detroit, 18 January to 15 May 2016
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, New York, 9 June to 14 August 2016

Henry F. Skerritt, ed. et al, No Boundaries: Australian Aboriginal Contemporary Abstract Painting, Prestel Verlag, Munich-London-New York, 2014, p.45 (illus.)

Synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen, on stretcher, unframed. Bears Mankaja Arts catalogue number PC 623/92 on reverse. Please note there are some small areas of paint smudging which are consistent with painters technique/ the painting process. The work appears to be in very good condition overall with no visible evidence of repair or restoration.
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Janangoo ‘…reimagine[s] the world through nonfigurative means.’¹ Janangoo’s extensive range of imagery is based on Gooniyandi ecology, on the fauna and especially the flora, on natural phenomena, on ‘reading’ the landscape of his ancestors. His sense of symmetry and composition, the delicacy of the touch of his brush and the fields of repeated motifs create a visual poetry that verges on the abstract. While he eschewed the iconography of ritual, one of his favoured compositional formats is the enclosed rectangle that echoes the borders applied to structures carried by performers in the ceremonies of the Gooniyandi and other Kimberley groups. See, for example, the fourteen paintings in the Imanara: Big River suite in the Kerry Stokes Collection.² Writing in the catalogue of the exhibition H₂O: A Miscellany of Works from the Kerry Stokes Collection, Anne Marie Brody describes Cherel’s ‘framing’ of a central image or icon thus: ‘This device functions as a boundary marker, maintaining a separation of domains between inside and outside, the sacred space of the central icon and the profane space beyond.’³ For an artist who preferred to paint on a small, intimate scale, usually on paper, Bush Food, 1992, is one of the largest canvases Janangoo Butcher Cherel had ever painted.

Karen Dayman, art coordinator of Mangkaja Arts 1990-2006, after consulting the art centre records has advised,

This painting is about manyi - bush foods [vegetable and fruit as distinct from meat].

It is an early example of a compositional device that Janangoo followed in later works where he framed the work with a band that he described as country. This is marked by the short sharp black brush strokes at the edge of the work. From there he works in concentric bands of a series of bush foods that he and his peers would comment that they ‘grew strong on’.

In this case he has named:

girndi bush plum

nalambanda fruit that grows in the hill country [rock fig],

garngi, seed which we used to grind to make damper

garngoo white fruit like a plum

jililyi boab nut seeds

bowaloo fruit

jarrandi

All of which he states ‘is good tucker manyi ‘. [pc 623/92 Munkaja Arts Resource Agency database].

 

The central panel follows another of his conventions in subject and style. The ripening of some of these bush fruits coincides with the falling of the flowers from the river gums. While he has not recorded this, the central panel is likely to be the flowers as he said in a later work ‘these are bush leaves falling, they have white flowers on the ends. They fall in these patterns when jilawoona (willywilly) catches them.’ (wp 298/02 Munkaja Arts Resource Agency database).

WC

1 Sprague, Q., Groundwork: Janangoo Butcher Cherel, Mick Jawalji, Rammey Ramsey, The Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 2011, p.9

2 Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency, Janangoo Butcher Cherel –Imanara: Big River, Artplace Gallery, Perth, 1999

3 Stringer, J. and A.M. Brody, H₂O: A Miscellany of Works from the Kerry Stokes Collection, Perth International Arts Festival, Australian Capital Equity, Perth, 1999, p.89