7 minute read
Marrnyula Munuŋgurr: Little Barks
from Sullivan+Strumpf Contemporary Art Gallery Sydney & Melbourne, Australia & Singapore – Sep-Nov 2023
Taken from the exhibition catalogue Maḏayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Painting, Yolŋu artist Marrnyula Munuŋurr tells the story in her own words of her family, her introduction to bark painting and her kinship to the land.
Words by Marrnyula Munuŋgurr. Translated into English by Bree Blakeman
My name is Marrnyula Munuŋurr. I am going to tell you a story about my painting practice. I was born at Yirrkala, and I grew up at Yirrkala, and then my family and I moved from Yirrkala to a place named Garrthalala.1 We stayed at Garrthalala together with the old men, with our fathers. After staying there for a while, we moved to Wäṉḏawuy, where we stayed for a long time, and I went to school there. It was while I was at school at Wäṉḏawuy that I learned about my clan’s paintings.
When I was about thirteen or fourteen, I started painting. I would sit with the old people, my fathers and father’s brothers at Wäṉḏawuy. We would sit close and I would watch them and ask questions. “What is that? What are you painting?” And I would get the story from them. In the old days, men and women helped one another. It was like this: if a woman’s husband was an artist, and he got tired, he would give the painting to her, or to one of his other wives, and they would help. It is the same as today. If you were an artist, my child, even if your wife was not an artist, you would give her the brush and say, “This is your work, helping me, making it easy for me.” And while your wife is helping, at the same time she is learning, sitting close and learning. Like a child will sit close to learn the story for a painting. The father or mother will tell them the story about that bark painting. All our fathers were artists and we learned from them.
My father, Djutjatjutja Munuŋgurr, helped establish the homelands at Wäṉḏawuy. And while he was doing it, he was teaching us. He gave us the bark and told us, “You draw the Shark, or the fish net or waterspout.”
Or he would tell us, “This is a painting of Bol’ŋu, the Thunderman.” And then he would give us the brush, saying, “First, take hold of the brush and start drawing those designs. Second, apply that white clay. And then use hair for the fine brushwork.” This is our ŋanapurru, our inheritance: it belongs to us. There are other designs that belong to other clans.
I used to cut small barks and work alongside the old men. I worked and I learned. And then I taught the younger children about bark painting. I taught them at school. We would go out and cut bark for painting and then work on it together. And I would tell them the stories about each different design. But while I was teaching the young children, I was still learning myself. My father was still teaching me to paint. Now I work alone, so I will stay with this style that I learned from my father. My mother, Noŋgirrŋa Marawili, also works alone, now that my father has passed. She creates her Yirritja paintings, and I create my own Dhuwa paintings.
In 1990, I had my first solo show at Framed Gallery in Darwin. I was not painting clan designs. Instead, I painted all the things that go on in our community—just everyday things. It was different from what other people had done before. A lot of those paintings went to the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. Then I worked at the craft shop [Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka]. I did my first linocut with Basil Hall, just a little one. I worked in the print space, where I also learned about printing techniques. I learned how to make screen prints, collagraphs and etchings, and I helped other artists print their works as well.
This is our culture. Yolŋu culture is passed down through songs and paintings. The movement of the dancer and the sound of the keening song that we cry for people who have passed away, or we cry for Country and the places these songs come from.
I worked there for quite a while until, then I fell ill, and I stopped. Then, because I was working at home, I started working with small scraps of bark. And I started to cut into the bark and tried to develop a different style. That is how it was. I started working with the small scraps like these. That was my idea. I did not work with large barks; I would just go around the craft shop, collecting all the small bits, the scraps of bark that other painters had left.
Now, I work with small pieces to make big works, puzzlework paintings. I did the first one at the art centre. It was small, just five or six little barks. Kade McDonald saw it and said, “Hey, sister, that’s a great painting with those small barks. We want that bark painting, with the small barks. Can you make some more?”
That first small bark painting is now in the museum in Melbourne [National Gallery of Victoria]. It is ganybu, the fish trap. And still, Kade was asking me, “More work, sister! More small barks!” Yes, that is my work: small barks. Easy, but still hard. It is a lot of work to produce that many barks like that.
I create these small bark paintings to tell a story. The small paintings I create show the good, healthy water at Wäṉḏawuy. I paint the freshwater where the Shark ancestor rushed up and hit its head at the place called Wäṉḏawuy. These are the designs for those waters. Can you see the white clay design? That is the water, the clear water. And the black design in the middle, that is the muddy water produced by the shark thrashing about. And this design goes straight toward Wäṉḏawuy.
This is our culture. Yolŋu culture is passed down through songs and paintings. The movement of the dancer and the sound of the keening song that we cry for people who have passed away, or we cry for Country and the places these songs come from. There are many songs. Yes, it is like this: men sing manikay and women cry milkarri (keening songs). And each one has its own actions: we might sing the pelican (galumay) song or the Catfish ancestor whose name is Gaṉŋal. Or the men might sing the Shark song while the women do the actions, moving like the Shark. It is the same as in the paintings. Or when the Morning Star rises, the men sing and the women wake up and begin crying for Baṉumbirr (the Morning Star ancestor). Just like that. It comes up and they cry, accompanying the Baṉumbirr song.
Gurruṯu (kinship) is truly important. In the white person’s way, you’ve got another system of kinship. Country is part of our kinship—for instance, Country like Yilpara, which is my mother’s country (Maḏarrpa clan), and Gurrumuru, which is my children’s Country (Dhaḻwaŋu clan). Dhuḏi-Djapu’ clan’s country of Dhuruputjpi is my great-grandparent Country, because it is our father’s mother’s mother’s Country. And my mother’s mother, her Country is at Garrimaḻa (Gälpu clan). So, our kinship is in the land. We are joined, lots of kin, through Country and our system of gurruṯu.
MARRNYULA MUNUŊGURR
19 OCTOBER – 11 NOVEMBER
SULLIVAN+STRUMPF EORA/SYDNEY
EMAIL ART@SULLIVANSTRUMPF.COM TO REQUEST A PREVIEW
