Road to Loomoogoo Country, 2002

natural earth pigments on canvas

90 x 120 cm

Est. $5,000 – $7,000

Provenance: Warmun Art Centre, Warmun Community, WA, Cat No. WAC 243/02 Private Collection, NSW, acquired from the above
Artwork story: Patrick Mung Mung worked as a stockman for many years on Texas Downs Station and the nearby stations of the East Kimberley, the last worker to leave Texas Downs when it closed in the 1970s. "I'm a bushman, I can't read," he told the Warmun Art Centre, "but I know the country from all of my life. From when I was little. I just grew up in this place. I'd walk and ride in this country back in those days." That knowledge of country came through his father, George Mung Mung, senior Gija leader and cross-cultural communicator. When George died in 1991, it fell to Patrick to accompany his father's carving Mary of Warmun to Canberra for the exhibition Aboriginal Art and Spirituality at the High Court of Australia. That occasion marked the beginning of his own journey as a painter. He was instrumental in establishing the artist-and-community-owned Warmun Art Centre in 1998 and has led Gija performances of the Goorirr Goorirr. Road to Loomoogoo Country maps the country Patrick walked and rode as a young man, rendered in the earth pigment palette of the Warmun tradition. The canvas is organised as a series of interlocking forms, each outlined in Mawoondool, the sacred white ochre harvested from deep in the ground near the river in Gija country. Researchers working in the East Kimberley have argued that Mawoondool is far more than a visual material: its significance is bound to the cultural processes governing its collection and application, connecting Gija understandings of goodness with the white dots that define the outline of every form.

Catalogues172 of 257

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Sale 3 · Lot 24

Patrick Mung Mung

b. c.1944 / c.1948

Region: Kimberley
Community: Warmun (Turkey Creek)
Language group: Gija (Kija, Gidja, Kitja)

Road to Loomoogoo Country, 2002

natural earth pigments on canvas

90 x 120 cm

Est. $5,000 – $7,000

Provenance: Warmun Art Centre, Warmun Community, WA, Cat No. WAC 243/02 Private Collection, NSW, acquired from the above
Artwork story: Patrick Mung Mung worked as a stockman for many years on Texas Downs Station and the nearby stations of the East Kimberley, the last worker to leave Texas Downs when it closed in the 1970s. "I'm a bushman, I can't read," he told the Warmun Art Centre, "but I know the country from all of my life. From when I was little. I just grew up in this place. I'd walk and ride in this country back in those days." That knowledge of country came through his father, George Mung Mung, senior Gija leader and cross-cultural communicator. When George died in 1991, it fell to Patrick to accompany his father's carving Mary of Warmun to Canberra for the exhibition Aboriginal Art and Spirituality at the High Court of Australia. That occasion marked the beginning of his own journey as a painter. He was instrumental in establishing the artist-and-community-owned Warmun Art Centre in 1998 and has led Gija performances of the Goorirr Goorirr. Road to Loomoogoo Country maps the country Patrick walked and rode as a young man, rendered in the earth pigment palette of the Warmun tradition. The canvas is organised as a series of interlocking forms, each outlined in Mawoondool, the sacred white ochre harvested from deep in the ground near the river in Gija country. Researchers working in the East Kimberley have argued that Mawoondool is far more than a visual material: its significance is bound to the cultural processes governing its collection and application, connecting Gija understandings of goodness with the white dots that define the outline of every form.