Kangaroo, 1975

natural earth pigments on bark

90 x 66 cm

Est. $3,000 – $4,000

Hammer $2,800

Provenance: Purchased directly from the artist at Maningrida, NT, 1975, by the current owner
Artwork story: Purchased directly from Bardkadubbu at Maningrida in 1975 by the current owner, then working at the Sydney University and NT Joint Crocodile Research Facility in the region, Kangaroo carries a provenance of exceptional personal directness — a work acquired in the field, in the year it was made, from the artist's own hands. Bardkadubbu had spent the early 1970s sharing outstations at Table Hill and Marrkolidjban in the Liverpool River region with Yirawala, widely regarded as one of the great figures of twentieth-century Australian art. It was there that he learned the full weight of rarrk: the crosshatching that in Kunwinjku tradition is not ornament but law, the same geometric patterns applied to Mardayin ceremonial objects, encoding the relationship between the visible animal and the sacred world it carries within it. That inheritance is fully present in Kangaroo. Against the deep red-brown ground of the bark, a female kangaroo rests with a joey curled in her pouch, the interior of each form structured by broad, confident stripes of brown, white, and ochre, the sections divided by a running sequence of white dots along the outline. The chest is crossed by bold horizontal bands of black and gold; the haunches by sweeping diagonals; the joey nestled in the pouch mirrors this visual language in miniature. The National Museum of Australia records that Bardkadubbu rose to prominence as a painter in the late 1970s. He entered the first National Aboriginal Art Award in 1984 and was selected for Aboriginal Art: The Continuing Tradition at the National Gallery of Australia in 1989, two years after his death.

Catalogues185 of 257

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Sale 3 · Lot 37

Curly Bargadubu

c. 1924 – 1987

Region: Arnhem Land
Community: Maningrida
Language group: Kuninjku

Kangaroo, 1975

natural earth pigments on bark

90 x 66 cm

Est. $3,000 – $4,000

Hammer $2,800

Provenance: Purchased directly from the artist at Maningrida, NT, 1975, by the current owner
Artwork story: Purchased directly from Bardkadubbu at Maningrida in 1975 by the current owner, then working at the Sydney University and NT Joint Crocodile Research Facility in the region, Kangaroo carries a provenance of exceptional personal directness — a work acquired in the field, in the year it was made, from the artist's own hands. Bardkadubbu had spent the early 1970s sharing outstations at Table Hill and Marrkolidjban in the Liverpool River region with Yirawala, widely regarded as one of the great figures of twentieth-century Australian art. It was there that he learned the full weight of rarrk: the crosshatching that in Kunwinjku tradition is not ornament but law, the same geometric patterns applied to Mardayin ceremonial objects, encoding the relationship between the visible animal and the sacred world it carries within it. That inheritance is fully present in Kangaroo. Against the deep red-brown ground of the bark, a female kangaroo rests with a joey curled in her pouch, the interior of each form structured by broad, confident stripes of brown, white, and ochre, the sections divided by a running sequence of white dots along the outline. The chest is crossed by bold horizontal bands of black and gold; the haunches by sweeping diagonals; the joey nestled in the pouch mirrors this visual language in miniature. The National Museum of Australia records that Bardkadubbu rose to prominence as a painter in the late 1970s. He entered the first National Aboriginal Art Award in 1984 and was selected for Aboriginal Art: The Continuing Tradition at the National Gallery of Australia in 1989, two years after his death.