Lanyirrda ("Billy")

Lance Bennett, acquired from the artist at Mudjinberri (Mudjinbardi), 1966

The Thomas Vroom Collection, The Netherlands

Sotheby's, London, Aboriginal Art - Thomas Vroom Collection, June 10, 2015, lot 29

Private Collection

Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Art (AAMU), Utrecht, Brook Andrew - Theme Park, October 17, 2008 - April 1, 2009

Lance Bennett's accompanying documentation reads in part:

"Namarnde is general term for the various spirits which inhabit the vast rocky Arnhem Land plateau, a region which the Aborigines call 'The Stone Country'. In the heat of the day, these spirits live in cool rocky holes. At night, namarnde emerge to leap, run and gambol about. 'The old people' (past generations) often saw these spirits, and later painted their likeness either on rock faces or on the interior walls of their bark huts. The artist has here shown a male and female narmande. The female is wearing a pubic apron made of a folded piece of paperbark held in place with bush string (spun from strips of bark from the Banyan tree). This bark was painted for Bennett during one of his visits to the small Aboriginal community on Mudjinberri cattle station, between the South and East Alligator Rivers, in the dry season of 1966."

Image Credits

Lanyirrda (“Billy”) © Estate of Lance Bennett