Crocodile, 1975

natural earth pigments on bark

103 x 33 cm

Est. $1,600 – $2,400

Hammer $2,600

Provenance: Purchased directly from the artist by the current owner, Maningrida, NT, 1975 The collector was working at the Sydney University/ NT Joint Crocodile Research Project, Maningrida, at the time of acquisition
Artwork story: In 1975 a researcher attached to the Sydney University/NT Joint Crocodile Research Project at Maningrida purchased this bark directly from David Milaybuma, a Kuninjku painter working from Maningrida in the period when the art centre was consolidating its role as a point of exchange between Arnhem Land artists and the wider world. The circumstance of acquisition places the work precisely in the landscape and moment of its making: a crocodile researcher buying a crocodile painting, at Maningrida, in 1975. The saltwater crocodile, Ginga, is one of the most significant ancestral beings across the coastal and estuarine country of western Arnhem Land, a creature of both physical presence and deep ceremonial importance whose depiction calls on the full resources of the rarrk tradition. Crocodile 1975 presents the animal at full extension across the length of a narrow bark, its body filling the field from the raised head at the upper register to the tapering tail at the lower. Against a near-black ground, the entire surface is resolved into fine geometric hatching in warm ochre, cream, and deep red-brown, the chevron and triangular patterns shifting across the body's segmented plates with the precision of a man painting what he knew. The clawed feet are rendered with careful attention, the serrated dorsal ridge traced in a fine sawtooth line. The composition is spare and assured, Ginga given full authority on Country.

Catalogues182 of 257

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Sale 3 · Lot 34

David Milaybuma

c.1938 – 1994

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

Crocodile, 1975

natural earth pigments on bark

103 x 33 cm

Est. $1,600 – $2,400

Hammer $2,600

Provenance: Purchased directly from the artist by the current owner, Maningrida, NT, 1975 The collector was working at the Sydney University/ NT Joint Crocodile Research Project, Maningrida, at the time of acquisition
Artwork story: In 1975 a researcher attached to the Sydney University/NT Joint Crocodile Research Project at Maningrida purchased this bark directly from David Milaybuma, a Kuninjku painter working from Maningrida in the period when the art centre was consolidating its role as a point of exchange between Arnhem Land artists and the wider world. The circumstance of acquisition places the work precisely in the landscape and moment of its making: a crocodile researcher buying a crocodile painting, at Maningrida, in 1975. The saltwater crocodile, Ginga, is one of the most significant ancestral beings across the coastal and estuarine country of western Arnhem Land, a creature of both physical presence and deep ceremonial importance whose depiction calls on the full resources of the rarrk tradition. Crocodile 1975 presents the animal at full extension across the length of a narrow bark, its body filling the field from the raised head at the upper register to the tapering tail at the lower. Against a near-black ground, the entire surface is resolved into fine geometric hatching in warm ochre, cream, and deep red-brown, the chevron and triangular patterns shifting across the body's segmented plates with the precision of a man painting what he knew. The clawed feet are rendered with careful attention, the serrated dorsal ridge traced in a fine sawtooth line. The composition is spare and assured, Ginga given full authority on Country.