Mithinari Gurruwiwi (1929-1976)

Have you ever been to Arnhem Land ?

I can't tell an ancestral file snake

From a Rainbow Serpent or sacred olive python.

Is that bäpi or the wititj totem ?

I've never been to Garrimala

In Galpu Country, to which this bark

Alludes, according to my catalogue.

Can anyone enlighten me? Howard Morphy, in his excellent "Aboriginal Art" (Phaidon), writes of Mithinari Gurruwiwi's characteristic development of  "themes from Galpu clan mythology", and of how the artist "expresses them in an individualistic way with great fluency and boldness of design. His works exemplify certain features of Eastern Arnhem Land that resonated strongly with modernist aesthetics- the boldness of the geometric shapes, the balance and vbrancy of the colours".

Judith Ryan's "Spirit in Land, Bark Paintings from Arnhem Land" (National Gallery of Victoria) devotes two full pages to bark paintings of Mithinari, including a very similar work, "Ancestral File Snake". (1964) . In her note on the artist and the painting (p. 109), she writes that Mithinari Gurruwiwi was of the Galpu clan, Dhuwa moiety, Yirrkala, north-eastern Arnhem Land. "The snake...comes out of the water to greet wolma, the pre-wet thunder clouds. Like the wititj python, the file snake makes rain by spitting into the sky."

I must be missing Australia, probably as a result of seeing Australian friends in the last few days.

We talked a lot about Aboriginal art, about Queenie McKenzie, Rover Thomas, and about Sidney Nolan, Garry Shead and other admired Australian painters.

The outback calls! So do Sydney Harbour and the Eastern Suburbs!