Artist: Lofty Nabarrdayal Nadjamerrek | Title: Barramundi | Year: c. 1970 | Medium: natural earth pigments on bark | Dimensions: 40 x 90 cm

Artist Profile
Lofty Nadjamerrek was born and spent his youth at Kukkurlumurl and his clan lands in the Mann River region of Western Arnhem Land. It was amongst these rocky outcrops and caves, where they camped during the wet season, that Nabardayal's father, Yanjorluk, taught him the art of rock painting. Indeed a number of Yanjorluk and Nabardayal’s earliest cave paintings survive to this day, in the Kodwalehwaleh region of the Djordi clan estate.

Bardayal left Arnhem Land as a teenager, migrating to the tin mining region of Maranboy, a two-hundred-kilometre walk to the south. He worked at the mine, where his European boss dubbed him Lofty, a reference to his tall stature, until the mine’s collapse in the face of the Federal Government’s equal pay legislation. Continue Reading