Mardayin Arm Bands, 1992

natural earth pigments on bark

130 x 58 cm

Est. $1,500 – $2,500

Hammer $1,300

Provenance: Maningrida Arts & Culture, Maningrida, NT, Cat No. MID144 Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, NSW Private Collection, Albany, New York Newstead Art in conjunction with Theodore Bruce Auctioneers and Valuers, The Terence J. Gilbert Collection of Aboriginal Art, Stanmore, NSW, 30 October 2025, Lot 22
Exhibited: Recent Bark Paintings from Maningrida, Arnhem Land, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, 3–20 February 1993
Artwork story: The Mardayin is one of the major regional ceremonies of Arnhem Land, a sacred complex of law, song and design that carries the ancestral authority of the Duwa patrimoiety across clan boundaries. The arm bands and tasselled dillybags depicted here are among its most significant material forms, worn and carried by participants in ceremony, and Midikuria's authority to paint them came directly through his father and grandfather, from whom he learned his subject matter, and his older brother, the well-known artist Jack Kala Kala, who guided his aesthetics and technique. Two registers fill the bark, separated by a broad band of black. In the upper, figures stand in rows carrying the white tasselled dillybags and feathered ornaments, rendered with a fineness of line that rewards close looking. The lower register opens onto a deep red ground where figures gather around a flowering tree and a circular form that reads as both ceremonial and cosmological. Throughout, columns of rarrk, the fine cross-hatched ochre patterning that identifies Duwa patrimoiety artists, frame the composition on both sides. This bark was painted in 1992, the same year Midikuria travelled to Japan as songman and leader of eight dance performers accompanying an exhibition of Aboriginal art at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka. While there he designed, painted and directed other Aboriginal artists in completing a large mural now permanently installed at the museum. He returned to Gochan Jiny-Jirra Outstation, near Maningrida, where he lived and worked until his death in 1996.

Catalogues246 of 257

Click to enlarge

Sale 3 · Lot 98

Les Midikuria

b. c.1938

Region: Arnhem Land
Community: Gochan Jiny-Jirra
Language group: Rembarrnga; Kune

Mardayin Arm Bands, 1992

natural earth pigments on bark

130 x 58 cm

Est. $1,500 – $2,500

Hammer $1,300

Provenance: Maningrida Arts & Culture, Maningrida, NT, Cat No. MID144 Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, NSW Private Collection, Albany, New York Newstead Art in conjunction with Theodore Bruce Auctioneers and Valuers, The Terence J. Gilbert Collection of Aboriginal Art, Stanmore, NSW, 30 October 2025, Lot 22
Exhibited: Recent Bark Paintings from Maningrida, Arnhem Land, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, 3–20 February 1993
Artwork story: The Mardayin is one of the major regional ceremonies of Arnhem Land, a sacred complex of law, song and design that carries the ancestral authority of the Duwa patrimoiety across clan boundaries. The arm bands and tasselled dillybags depicted here are among its most significant material forms, worn and carried by participants in ceremony, and Midikuria's authority to paint them came directly through his father and grandfather, from whom he learned his subject matter, and his older brother, the well-known artist Jack Kala Kala, who guided his aesthetics and technique. Two registers fill the bark, separated by a broad band of black. In the upper, figures stand in rows carrying the white tasselled dillybags and feathered ornaments, rendered with a fineness of line that rewards close looking. The lower register opens onto a deep red ground where figures gather around a flowering tree and a circular form that reads as both ceremonial and cosmological. Throughout, columns of rarrk, the fine cross-hatched ochre patterning that identifies Duwa patrimoiety artists, frame the composition on both sides. This bark was painted in 1992, the same year Midikuria travelled to Japan as songman and leader of eight dance performers accompanying an exhibition of Aboriginal art at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka. While there he designed, painted and directed other Aboriginal artists in completing a large mural now permanently installed at the museum. He returned to Gochan Jiny-Jirra Outstation, near Maningrida, where he lived and worked until his death in 1996.