AN EXAMINATION OF RECENT ACQUISITIONS FROM JGM GALLERY‘S COLLECTION

IN RECENT MONTHS, JGM GALLERY ACQUIRED SEVERAL WORKS OF PARTICULAR SIGNIFICANCE BY FIRST NATIONS ARTISTS. GIVEN THE COLLECTIBLE NATURE OF THESE WORKS, THE GALLERY’S DIRECTOR, JENNIFER GUERRINI MARALDI, COMMISSIONED THE FOLLOWING WRITTEN PIECE, WITH THE AIM OF ELUCIDATING THE CONCEPTS CONVEYED BY EACH WORK.

ONE OF THE more interesting aspects of Aboriginal Art is that “Country” is often represented with small scale motifs - the serpent, the kangaroo, the goanna - and yet the actions of these small creatures often have far reaching consequences. Amongst the most prominent of the Dreamtime stories, for example, is that of the Rainbow Serpent, whose emergence from beneath the earth created the geographical features of a formerly barren world. The Serpent is believed by some to be the rainbow itself and that, when visible, it signalled the Serpent’s journey from one jila (waterhole) to another. This type of narrative logic - the macro expressed through the micro - is an indication of how profoundly significant the land is to many First Nations Australians.

In Ngayuku Ngura - My Country the Burton Women’s Collaborative have depicted the Serpent’s passage through dozens of jila, activating the full spectrum of colour as it breaches the water’s surface. For the most part, Aboriginal Art utilises both the aesthetics of abstraction and representation, and Ngayuku Ngura is no exception. This is, after all, a topographical landscape, but it has a visceral and psychic intensity that is rarely seen in representative art.

In contrast to Ngayuku Ngura, Garnkiny Ngarranggarni by Mabel Juli is conspicuously monochromatic. Juli is a senior Gija artist from Warmun in the East Kimberley, Western Australia. Amongst various contributions to the development of Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Juli is known for her innovations with the traditional Gija palette. She and her celebrated contemporaries, Queen McKenzie & Madigan Thomas would, in the 1980s, begin mixing ochres without natural pigments. Juli’s work is remarkably minimalistic. Very rarely does she embellish her subjects and the landscape surrounding them. Instead, she distils them to their spiritual essence as she renders their most pivotal actions in the Ngarranggarni (Juli’s Dreaming and the origin story of the Gija). This piece, titled Garnkiny Ngarranggarni (Moon Dreaming), is an archetypal work by Juli and one of the finest examples of her Garnkiny doo Wardel (Moon & Star) paintings. The Moon and Star are central characters in the Ngarranggarni and through them, Juli explores ideas surrounding forbidden love, kinship and the origins of mortality. She anthropomorphises the moon and the star, depicting their tender embrace in the lonely void that surrounds them.

Jimmy Barmula Yunupingu (1963-2018) grew up in Yirrkala in Northeastern Arnhem Land. As the son of Dhuwarrwarr Marika, his artistic inheritance was rich. Wally Caruana, formerly the curator of Aboriginal Art at the National Gallery of Australia, has drawn parallels, in terms of cultural impact, between the Marika family and the Boyd dynasty. Prior to a sequence of personal tragedies and illnesses, Yunupingu had painted Yalangbara, a land area whose managerial duties he inherited from his mother. Following the death of his wife and certain health complications, however, Yunupingu stopped painting. In a short period of activity before his passing in 2018, he drew a series of poignant and minimal works, depicting his own passage across a body of water. Though a self-portrait, the figuration is stylised such that the viewer can place themself in the artist’s position. Features are muted, universalising Yunupingu’s personal situation and experience.

- Written by Julius Killerby