In the Dreamtime, the two Ancestral Dogs Adjumarllarl and Omwarl came to Gunbalanya from the west, looking for water. They stayed here, and started digging a well. A little bit of water came out and made a small billabong, which we now call Arrmunbu. It lies in the middle of the town of Gunbalanya. There they spoke with Komorlo (the Egret) and Manimunak (the Magpie Goose). Komorlo said she would stay on the billabong and live there. And Manimunak said she would go up to the top of Arrkuluk hill and stay there. So they made their decision. Manimunak climbed to the top of Arrkuluk, and the two dogs kept on going, past Injalak Hill. But Komorlo decided to stay back where there was a billabong. So today we see lots of egrets on the billabong today, standing and flying around and eating fish. Every wet season the rains fill up the billabong again, and we can see lots of egrets chasing small fish in the shallows, spearing them with their beaks.
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.