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Click to enlargeSale 2 · Lot 20
Yalpi Yunupingu
b. 1961
- Region
- Arnhem Land
- Community
- Biranybirany
- Language group
- Gumatj
Baru at Nalarrwuy, 1995
122 x 38 cm
Est. $800 – $1,200
Hammer $750
- Provenance
- Buku-Larrnggay Arts, Yirrkala, NT Private Collection, Albany NY
- Artwork story
- This bark painting depicts the Ancestral Crocodile, Baru, at Nalarrwuy, a coastal paperbark swamp in North East Arnhem Land that is central to the Gumatj people’s fire-bringing narratives. The diamond grids and crosshatched fields symbolise the ancestral fire, while the presence of crocodiles recalls Baru’s transformative role in establishing law, ceremony, and fertility for the Gumatj clan. The work demonstrates Yunupingu’s assured hand in conveying ancestral events through the dynamic interplay of figurative and geometric elements. Executed with natural ochres on bark, the painting resonates with the ceremonial power of its subject and its place within Yolngu cosmology