Ngalyod Rainbow Serpent, 2004

natural earth pigments on bark

109 x 59 cm

Est. $1,800 – $2,200

Hammer $2,400

Provenance: Maningrida Arts & Culture, Maningrida, NT, Cat No. 517-04 Private Collection, NSW Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Maningrida Arts & Culture
Artwork story: Ngalyod is the name the Kuninjku people of west central Arnhem Land give to the rainbow serpent. The Maningrida Arts & Culture documentation for this work describes her as a presence felt throughout the landscape: her voice is the roar of waterfalls in the escarpment country, her tracks are the large holes worn into stony riverbanks and cliff faces, and the brilliant white ochre that artists use for bark painting, body decoration and rock art is said to be her faeces. She resides in billabongs, creeks, rivers and waterfalls, responsible for the water plants that grow along their banks. She sheds her skin and emerges renewed. She swallows humans and regurgitates them transformed by her blood. Sacred sites where she is known to live are treated with care, certain activities forbidden there for fear of her wrath. Ngalyod fills the entire field of stringybark in a composition of considerable formal ambition. Her body, outlined in white dot work and crosshatched throughout in ochres of red, white, dark brown and pale gold, curves and folds back upon itself across the full height of the bark. A small plant form, rendered in fine white line, emerges at the upper left. The rarrk crosshatching that fills her body is the sacred clan design of this country, and this work, painted at Kurrurldurl the year after her first major group exhibitions, represents an early and assured statement of a practice that would grow significantly in the years that followed.

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Sale 3 · Lot 90

Irenie Ngalinba

b. c.1979

Region: Arnhem Land
Community: Maningrida
Language group: Kuninjku

Ngalyod Rainbow Serpent, 2004

natural earth pigments on bark

109 x 59 cm

Est. $1,800 – $2,200

Hammer $2,400

Provenance: Maningrida Arts & Culture, Maningrida, NT, Cat No. 517-04 Private Collection, NSW Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Maningrida Arts & Culture
Artwork story: Ngalyod is the name the Kuninjku people of west central Arnhem Land give to the rainbow serpent. The Maningrida Arts & Culture documentation for this work describes her as a presence felt throughout the landscape: her voice is the roar of waterfalls in the escarpment country, her tracks are the large holes worn into stony riverbanks and cliff faces, and the brilliant white ochre that artists use for bark painting, body decoration and rock art is said to be her faeces. She resides in billabongs, creeks, rivers and waterfalls, responsible for the water plants that grow along their banks. She sheds her skin and emerges renewed. She swallows humans and regurgitates them transformed by her blood. Sacred sites where she is known to live are treated with care, certain activities forbidden there for fear of her wrath. Ngalyod fills the entire field of stringybark in a composition of considerable formal ambition. Her body, outlined in white dot work and crosshatched throughout in ochres of red, white, dark brown and pale gold, curves and folds back upon itself across the full height of the bark. A small plant form, rendered in fine white line, emerges at the upper left. The rarrk crosshatching that fills her body is the sacred clan design of this country, and this work, painted at Kurrurldurl the year after her first major group exhibitions, represents an early and assured statement of a practice that would grow significantly in the years that followed.