John Mawurndjul

For a series of related Lorrkons by the artist included in his recent retrospective see, Clotilde Bullen, John Mawurndjul: I am the Old and theNew, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2018, pp. 290-305.

In the catalogue for his recent retrospective John Mawurndjul writes about the traditional use of Lorrkkon’s by his people, ‘We used to cut the hollow logs and take them into the ceremony, down to the camp. After a person dies, I would wait two years. We don't bury them in the ground; it is too difficult to extract the body. Two years time means, okay get the shovel, time to stand up the lorrkkon. We tell everyone, 'Let's go to the Lorrkkon ceremony. Let's cut a hollow log'. Then someone cuts one and we wait a few days for it to dry out and become light. Once it is light, it can be carried down and then we start preparing the surface with a wood rasp, and the bones of the deceased are prepared. In the Lorrkkon ceremony early in the morning, at dawn, that's when we put the bones into the hollow log. We place the bones inside until they have filled it up and we knock them down, moving them into the hollow log. But they don't fall out the other end, as we have blocked the bottom of the log. At the end of the ceremony, early in the morning, as the sun moves across the sky, the hollow log is placed upright. It will stand there and decay. At the end of the standing-up ritual the women will dance around it.

In the camp, people chant as they move up. The section with men carrying burning torches represents the fire hawks who carry burning embers and take them away, dropping them to continue the fire. Fire hawks, or brown falcons, carry the fire in the ceremony, representing the hawk lifting up that person and taking them away. I have seen hawks carrying fire. During a bushfire, they dive down at speed and take burning ember in their claws-'snap', they grab it. They take the fire away and drop it somewhere else’ (ibid., p. 283).