Ngalyod, 2004

natural earth pigments on bark

176 x 48 cm

Est. $1,500 – $2,500

Hammer $3,400

Provenance: Maningrida Arts & Culture, Maningrida, NT, Cat No. 1961-04 Hogarth Galleries, Paddington, NSW Private Collection, NSW, acquired from the above Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Maningrida Arts & Culture
Exhibited: Bark Paintings, Carvings and Fibre Works from Maningrida, Hogarth Galleries, Paddington, NSW, 29 September – 30 October 2004
Artwork story: Dilebang, the site recorded in Maningrida Arts & Culture's documentation of this work, is regarded as among the most sacred and dangerous places in the Kun-Kurulk clan estate. It is the home of Ngalyod, the Rainbow Serpent, the most profound ancestral presence in the cosmology of west central Arnhem Land. Active during the wet season, Ngalyod resides in billabongs and freshwater springs, and is responsible for the water plants that grow there. The roar of waterfalls in the escarpment country is said to be her voice. She swallows humans and regurgitates them, transformed by her blood. The white ochre used in bark painting is said to be her faeces. Iyuna paints Ngalyod at Dilebang surrounded by barddedde (flagellaria indica), a vine said to have been produced by the serpent herself, and by water lilies (nymphaea spp.) that appear in the documentation as growing from her body. The serpent's form winds through the composition in a sinuous band of warm ochre, the crosshatched rarrk patterns filling her body rendered with a density and precision that places this bark among Iyuna's most technically assured works. Within the long narrow format, the figurative and the ornamental hold in careful balance: Ngalyod emerges from and dissolves back into the patterns of Country.

Catalogues240 of 257

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Sale 3 · Lot 92

James Iyuna

1959 – 2016

Region: Arnhem Land
Community: Mumeka
Language group: Kuninjku (Eastern Kunwinjku)

Ngalyod, 2004

natural earth pigments on bark

176 x 48 cm

Est. $1,500 – $2,500

Hammer $3,400

Provenance: Maningrida Arts & Culture, Maningrida, NT, Cat No. 1961-04 Hogarth Galleries, Paddington, NSW Private Collection, NSW, acquired from the above Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Maningrida Arts & Culture
Exhibited: Bark Paintings, Carvings and Fibre Works from Maningrida, Hogarth Galleries, Paddington, NSW, 29 September – 30 October 2004
Artwork story: Dilebang, the site recorded in Maningrida Arts & Culture's documentation of this work, is regarded as among the most sacred and dangerous places in the Kun-Kurulk clan estate. It is the home of Ngalyod, the Rainbow Serpent, the most profound ancestral presence in the cosmology of west central Arnhem Land. Active during the wet season, Ngalyod resides in billabongs and freshwater springs, and is responsible for the water plants that grow there. The roar of waterfalls in the escarpment country is said to be her voice. She swallows humans and regurgitates them, transformed by her blood. The white ochre used in bark painting is said to be her faeces. Iyuna paints Ngalyod at Dilebang surrounded by barddedde (flagellaria indica), a vine said to have been produced by the serpent herself, and by water lilies (nymphaea spp.) that appear in the documentation as growing from her body. The serpent's form winds through the composition in a sinuous band of warm ochre, the crosshatched rarrk patterns filling her body rendered with a density and precision that places this bark among Iyuna's most technically assured works. Within the long narrow format, the figurative and the ornamental hold in careful balance: Ngalyod emerges from and dissolves back into the patterns of Country.