ALEC MINGELMANGANU

Alec Mingelmanganu lived at the former Benedictine Mission at Kalumbaru and became one of a select group that began painting there in the mid-1970s. Anthropologist Kim Ackerman first noticed his work during a visit to Kalumburu in 1974/75, when he discovered a discarded Wandjina painting formerly used during ceremony. It was later shown during the 1975 Derby Boab Week Art Show under the title ‘Australian Gothic’ (Sotheby’s catalogue entry November 1997). During the late 1970s, Mary Macha, who ran the Government-backed Aboriginal Traditional Arts outlet in Perth, developed a friendship with Ackerman, whom she from time to time would seek advice from. The first Wandjina paintings on bark had been produced for anthropologists as early as the 1930s. In 1979 Mary Macha received funding from the Education Department to conduct workshops aimed at investigating whether traditional ochres could be used on canvas, as an alternative to bark. The resulting works were the first to be produced in the region on canvas. Inadvertently, Mingelmanganu’s participation drew immediate attention to his genius, for his 'first canvas was outstanding' (Macha cited in Ryan 1993: 17). A solo show was held in September of the following year at the government marketing company’s Aboriginal Traditional Arts in Perth.

The celebrated canvases produced for this exhibition are considered amongst the finest depictions of Wandjina that have ever been produced for sale. The majority of these works are now in major state galleries, including two in the National Gallery of Australia, one in the National Gallery of Victoria and one in The Berndt Museum of Anthropology, Perth.

Mingelmanganu’s images of Wandjina with pointed shoulders mimicked the depictions of Wandjina that he had seen on a trip to Lawley River with anthropologist Ian Crawford the year before. In fact, it was Mingelmanganu’s desire to replicate the life-size Wandjina cave paintings that influenced him to ask to work on canvases of a similar size to artists Robert Juniper and Vaclav Macha's, which he had seen in Perth at the time of his solo show there. This prompted four masterpieces in the last years of Mingelmanganu life, three of which hung, for many years, in the foyer of Lord McAlpine’s Australia Bank building in Perth.

Mingelmanganu’s motivation to perpetuate the power of the Wandjina through his art was not dissimilar to the way in which regular restorations of rock paintings were motivated by a desire to continue cultural practices and religious beliefs. Restoring rock paintings of Wandjina is an integral responsibility for many Kimberley tribes, including the Woonambal, to whom Alec Mingelmanganu belonged. The Wandjina, spirits who preside over the rains and the unborn spirits of children, were found predominantly on the walls of caves, where they are said to have transformed into paintings upon their death. Thus the Aboriginal custodians believed that they did not create the Wandjina paintings but inherited them from the spirits who first made them.

Not all Wandjina look alike. Each clan was responsible for only a single Wandjina, and it was said that there were 'so many of them that almost the whole Kimberley is crisscrossed by their paths' (Crawford 1968: 31). Mingelmanganu’s Wandjina are highly distinctive and unique in proportion, composition and tonal quality. In a number of his largest works, the full-length figure of a Wandjina is decorated in lines of dots similar to body painting designs, intended to give a visual brightness which expresses the spiritual essence of the ancestral beings. Alec Minglemanganu is considered the greatest of all artists to have rendered this ancient spirit-being in modern media. His paintings have become the most loved and highly collectable of all of these iconic creator spirit depictions.

© Adrian Newstead

References

Caruana, W., 1993, Aboriginal Art, Thames and Hudson, London.

Crawford, Ian, 1968, The Art of The Wandjina, Oxford university press, Melbourne.

Dedman, Roger, Autumn 2006, ‘Market Profile Wandjina,’ Art and Australia, V.43. No. 3.

Fish, Peter, 26 November 1997, ‘Appreciation,’ The Sydney Morning Herald: 7.

Ryan, J., 1993, Images of Power, Aboriginal Art of the Kimberley, exhib, cat.,National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne