Yirawala

Painted in the Oenpelli region of Western Arnhem Land in 1967

Jim Davidson, Melbourne

Private Collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above in 1989

Acquired from the above by the present owner with the assistance of Tim Klingender Fine Art, Sydney

In this painting, Yirawala ostensibly depicts a typical hunting scene with two figures spearing kangaroos, or in this case rock wallabies. The image, however, incorporates deeper levels of meanings and associations. The rock wallabies are drawn in X-ray style to reveal the heart and liver; their bodies are decorated in sections of rarrk cross-hatched clan patterns; and the animals wear headdresses of brolga feathers, here signified by a feather drawn between the their ears – all of which identifies the wallabies with the ancestor Nadulmi, in both male and female form, the leader of a major regional ceremony, the Wubarr. The Wubarr is performed to ensure the coming of the monsoon season, the subsequent fertility in all species and the regular cycles of nature. The hunters, usually described as mimih spirit figures, also wear feathered tassels indicating this is a depiction of ceremonial performers, and their action in spearing the wallabies leading to death implies the end of one seasonal cycle.¹

Yirawala was an important cultural leader steeped in the traditions of his people, the Kuninjku of Western Arnhem Land. His ritual status gave him the authority to introduce innovations in bark painting that were to have a profound influence on artists of subsequent generations. Yirawala was recognised as the master artist before the surge in the appreciation of Aboriginal art in the latter decades of the twentieth century. In recognition of the significance of his achievements, in the 1970s, the National Gallery of Australia acquired a large collection of his bark paintings² in its program to represent in depth Australia’s leading artists.

¹ Taylor, Luke, Seeing the inside: Bark painting in Western Arnhem Land, Claredon Press, Oxford, 1996, pp.176, 238.

² Assembled by Sandra Le Brun Holmes. See her monograph, Yirawala: Painter of the Dreaming, Hodder & Stoughton, Sydney, 1992.