Other Media on paper

Signed certificate of authenticity.

Don has painted Karrbarda (Long Yam) and a Djerrh (Dilly Bag). Djerrh is the Kunwinjku term for a traditional fibre bag. These have been made in Arnhem Land since long before there were collectors for them, and they are featured in rock art throughout the region. More specifically, conical baskets usually made from pandanus are known as bulbbe, while djerrh usually refers to a looped and knotted string bag. These are usually made from the inner bark of manbudbud, the kurrajong tree, manbornde, the banyan, or the leaves of marrabbi, the sand palm. Loosely twined baskets could be used to soak the toxins from cycad nuts or cheeky yams, while tightly twined ones were used to carry things such as bush honey. String bags carried possessions and food, such as Karrbarda (long yams). Women used to dig up long yams with kunbalkbu (digging sticks), but now they usually use kubba (“crow bars”, sticks fashioned from bits of metal). They go into the forest, to the places they know the yams will be, dig them up and cook them in the ashes of the fire. We still eat them, like we always used to. But the young girls today often don't know how to recognise the leaves of the long yam, only the old women. Karrbarda is also the subject of a well known song cycle, still performed in Gunbalanya today.

Kunwinjku art is part of the oldest continuous art tradition in the world. Ancestors of today’s artists have been painting the rock walls of West Arnhem Land for tens of thousands of years. The traditional palette of white, red, yellow and black comes from the ochre that naturally occurs in the region, although contemporary artists sometimes choose to paint in acrylics as well. Kunwinjku artists famously paint using either the traditional rarrk hatching technique, or the more contemporary and complex cross hatching technique which has been adapted from ceremonial painting. These lines are painted using a manyilk, which is a piece of sedge grass shaved down until only a few fibres remain.
Artists at Injalak Art Centre have been painting on Arches 640gsm handmade watercolour paper since it was introduced as a medium by American art collecter John W. Kluge in 1990 when he commissioned a suite of paintings for the Kluge-Ruhe Collection at the University of Virginia, USA. It is archival quality and has an organic texture that mimics the natural surface of bark, making it an excellent alternative in West Arnhem Land where trees suitable for bark harvesting are much sparser than other areas of the Top End of Australia.
This painting needs to be framed. It’s also being sent direct from the artist at a remote art centre, Injalak Arts, in the top end. Please note there is only one mail plane a week that takes the artwork to Gunbalanya. The tracking information is then received a week later when the mail plane returns so often the paintings are delivered before we receive the tracking information. Please expect a slightly longer wait for this very special artwork to arrive.