Artwork Description

Acrylic on paper

Signed certificate of authenticity.

Djanay (the Sand Monitor or Yellow Spotted Monitor) was a good painter. He painted the pattern on Kalawan (the Goanna)'s back. Kalawan turned around saw that it was a great pattern. Then it was the goanna's turn. He painted Djanay's back, but he wasn't a very good painter. Djanay turned around and looked at his back. "You've done it all wrong!" he said angrily. He was so angry he chased Kalawan away. From that time on, they have always lived in different places. Kalawan on the floodplains, and Djanay in the manberrk, the dry open forest country.

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. Klunge 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.

Contact Jeremiah

Medium

Acrylic on Arches paper

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Unframed (requires framing)

This artwork is unframed and requires framing.

#goanna, #monitor, #Arnhem Land, #rarrk, #djang, #dreaming

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