Ngalyod — Rainbow Serpent, 1988

natural earth pigments on bark

173 x 61 cm

Est. $7,000 – $9,000

Hammer $10,000

Provenance: Maningrida Arts & Culture, Maningrida, NT, Cat No. MAW112 Lawson Menzies, Aboriginal Art Auction, Sydney, NSW, 9 November 2005, Lot 48 Private Collection, NSW, acquired from the above Accompanied by certificates of authenticity from Maningrida Arts & Culture and Lawson Menzies
Artwork story: Ngalyod's nature varies tremendously from myth to myth and site to site. She can be male, female, or neuter. She can belong to either moiety. She can be benign or highly dangerous. Some of her resting places are forbidden to all but elders. Only the marrgidjbu, the clever men of sufficient ceremonial standing, can see her in her dreaming places. She can take the form of a buffalo or kangaroo, and only a clever man will see past the disguise. John Mawurndjul painted Ngalyod — Rainbow Serpent at Mumeka in January 1988, the year he first came to sustained national attention. A Nagaralg clan man of the Yirridjdja moiety, his mastery of rarrk, the intricate crosshatched clan designs that carry both cosmological meaning and formal authority, would bring his work to the Musée du quai Branly in Paris, the National Gallery of Australia, the British Museum, and major institutions across Europe and North America. Peter Marralwanga, whose work appears elsewhere in this Catalogue, was his uncle and teacher. Ngalyod's great body coils in a tight spiral before sweeping in a broad arc across the full length of this large horizontal bark, divided into segments by a continuous line of fine white dot-work, each filled with alternating bands of deep red-brown, near-black, warm ochre, and cream rarrk. Nici Cumpston OAM, Director of Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, described Mawurndjul's practice as always looking for the power within the painting, turning away from the work and wheeling back to see whether it had a shimmer. The head is rendered in white pigment at the lower right, open-mouthed, a forked tongue extended. The body fills the bark completely, leaving almost no unworked ground. It is Ngalyod given her full scale and presence by a man who had grown up in her Country.

Catalogues156 of 257

Click to enlarge

Sale 3 · Lot 8

John Mawurndjul

1952 – 2024

Region: Arnhem Land
Community: Marrkolidjban
Language group: Kuninjku

Ngalyod — Rainbow Serpent, 1988

natural earth pigments on bark

173 x 61 cm

Est. $7,000 – $9,000

Hammer $10,000

Provenance: Maningrida Arts & Culture, Maningrida, NT, Cat No. MAW112 Lawson Menzies, Aboriginal Art Auction, Sydney, NSW, 9 November 2005, Lot 48 Private Collection, NSW, acquired from the above Accompanied by certificates of authenticity from Maningrida Arts & Culture and Lawson Menzies
Artwork story: Ngalyod's nature varies tremendously from myth to myth and site to site. She can be male, female, or neuter. She can belong to either moiety. She can be benign or highly dangerous. Some of her resting places are forbidden to all but elders. Only the marrgidjbu, the clever men of sufficient ceremonial standing, can see her in her dreaming places. She can take the form of a buffalo or kangaroo, and only a clever man will see past the disguise. John Mawurndjul painted Ngalyod — Rainbow Serpent at Mumeka in January 1988, the year he first came to sustained national attention. A Nagaralg clan man of the Yirridjdja moiety, his mastery of rarrk, the intricate crosshatched clan designs that carry both cosmological meaning and formal authority, would bring his work to the Musée du quai Branly in Paris, the National Gallery of Australia, the British Museum, and major institutions across Europe and North America. Peter Marralwanga, whose work appears elsewhere in this Catalogue, was his uncle and teacher. Ngalyod's great body coils in a tight spiral before sweeping in a broad arc across the full length of this large horizontal bark, divided into segments by a continuous line of fine white dot-work, each filled with alternating bands of deep red-brown, near-black, warm ochre, and cream rarrk. Nici Cumpston OAM, Director of Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, described Mawurndjul's practice as always looking for the power within the painting, turning away from the work and wheeling back to see whether it had a shimmer. The head is rendered in white pigment at the lower right, open-mouthed, a forked tongue extended. The body fills the bark completely, leaving almost no unworked ground. It is Ngalyod given her full scale and presence by a man who had grown up in her Country.