John Mawunrdjul
John Mawurndjul is one of the leading Indigenous Australian artists, receiving world recognition for his work. Kuninjku bark painter and sculptor he was born in 1952 at Mumeka, an important camping site for members of the Kurulk clan on the Mann River some 50 kms south of Maningrida settlement. He grew up at Mumeka and surrounding Tomkinson, Liverpool and Mann Rivers seasonal camps with only sporadic contacts with balandas (non-aboriginal people). In the late 1970's he was tutored in painting by his elder brother Jimmy Njiminjuma and uncle Peter Marralwanga, from whom he learned to use rarrk, the cross-hatched infill in new and innovative ways. He started to paint on small barks generally depicting natural species and mythological beings such as Ngalyod the rainbow serpent that guards sacred sites called djang in all western Arnhem Land. During the late 1980's he started to produce large and more elaborate paintings with complex arrangements of figures. His work rapidly captured the attention of the critics and he won in 1988 the Rothmans Foundation Award for best painting in traditional media at NAAA and the first prize at the Barunga Festival Art exhibition. Since then, his work has been included in numerous shows and Gabrielle Pizzi gallery held his first solo show in 1991. During the 1990's his work has also been included in major overseas exhibitions dealing with Indigenous Australian art such as Crossroads in Japan (1992), Aratjara: Art of the first Australians in Germany and UK (1993-94), My country in Denmark (1999) and In the heart of Arnhem Land in France (2001).

More recently, in 2000 his work was featured at the Sydney Biennale and in 1999 and 2002 he won the bark painting prize at the Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award. He was awarded the prestigious Clemenger Contemporary Art Prize in 2003. He is today influencing other Kuninjku artists to paint in his style and is teaching his wife Kay Lindjuwanga and daughter Anna Wurrkidj to become accomplished painters. In doing so he has created a whole school of artists and is leading an exciting and contemporary Australian art movement. In 2000, his work was featured at the Sydney Biennale and in 1999 and 2002 he won the bark painting prize at the Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award. He was awarded the prestigious Clemenger Contemporary Art Prize in 2003. In 2004, his work was included in the landmark exhibition Crossing Country, the alchemy of Western Arnhem Land held at the AGNSW. In September 2005, Mawurndjul opened the first retrospective of his work at the Musee Jean Tinguely in Basel Switzerland. More recently, he has worked on a major commission for the new Musee du Quai Branly that opened in June 2006. His work features in the bookshop and is integral part of the architecture.

Recent paintings and new developments
John Mawurndjul's work has always dealt with themes of spirituality, mythology and life cycle. Ngalyod has remained a central theme in his work but over the last few years he has concentrated on what appear to be more abstract works associated with the Mardayin ceremony, a now rarely performed ceremony with clan identity and mortuary themes. The Mardayin ceremony also involves the initiation of young men by showing them sacred objects and painting their chests.

It was the first secret cult ceremony into which John Mawurndjul was initiated and has left a lasting impression on Mawurndjul (Garde: 1997) . His paintings depict the ceremony as a whole at particular sites located in his clan estate, including elements of his ancestral landscapes and the stories which are not in the public domain. He now often depicts in his work a large billabong at Milmilngkan which is a very important Rainbow serpent sacred site. Much of his paintings are based on the mythology of sites in this area of the Kurulk clan estate where he lives with his family. Visually, in Mawurndjul's recent works, fine cross-hatching now dominates the entire surface of the painting and encrypts various secret meanings. The direction of the cross-hatching changes constantly and unpredictably. In innovating both in the treatment of rarrk and in the iconic representation of the Mardayin themes, he expresses in a dynamic way his strong connections to the land and ancestral power. His sculptural work also incorporates Mardayin themes. He mainly concentrates on the representation of Mimih
figures or Duwa moiety female creator beings called Buluwana. They comprise in their body decorations elements borrowed from Mardayin body designs and painted wooden sculptures used in the ceremony. He was one of the first Kuninjku artists to use rarrk instead of dotting patterns on his Mimih carvings, making again the path for a new trend in Kuninjku art.

Always looking for new ways to express his preoccupations with land and spirituality he summarizes his artistic quest by saying My head is full up with ideas (Kohen: 2001) .

Collections
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Art Gallery of South Australia
Art Gallery of Western Australia
Artbank
Ballarat Fine Art Gallery
Djomi Museum
Kluge Collection
Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory
Museum of Contemporary Art
Musee du Quai Branly
National Gallery of Australia
National Gallery of Victoria
National Maritime Museum
Queensland Art Gallery
Murray Garde, ‘Ngalyod in my head, the art of John Mawurndjul,
Annandale, 1997
Apolline Kohen, My head is full up with ideas, In the heart of Arnhem
Land, Myth and the making of contemporary Aboriginal art, Paris, 2001Owen
Yalandja (b. 1962)


Kay Lindjuwanga (b. 1957, Kuninjku)
Winner of the 2004 Telstra Bark painting award. Kay Lindjuwanga is one ofthe leading female artists working for Maningrida Arts and Culture today. She is the daughter of Peter Marralwanga and she was taught to paint by her husband and acclaimed artist, John Mawurndjul. Since around 1980 Lindjuwanga has often assisted Mawurndjul with his painting. Lindjuwanga now exhibits under her own name and was the first Kuninjku woman to bring barks into the arst centre around 1990. Apart from bark paintings, her repertoire includes lorrkon (hollow logs), mimih carvings and etchings. She had a first solo show in 2004 at Aboriginal & Pacific Arts in Sydney and her work was included in the landmark exhibition Crossing Country' at the AGNSW. Her work was presented at the 2006 Melbourne Art Fair.

Owen Yalandja
Kuninjku artist Owen Yalandja is a senior member of the Dangkorlo clan, the custodians of an important yawkywak site. Members of the Dangkorlo clan have set up their outstation community at Barrihdjowkkeng near a billabong that is a Yirridjdja moiety sacred site for the yawkyawk spirits. Yawkyawk or young spirit girls live in this billabong and their shadows can occasionally be seen as they flee the smell of humans who approach the water. They are imagined to have been girls who transformed into mermaid- like figures with fish tails. The identity of this group is very much related to their yawkyawk dreaming for which they have spiritual and practical responsibility.

Yalandja's repertoire is almost exclusively concerned with representations of the yawkyawk spirits in sculpted form. In the early 1980s, Yalandja learned carving from his father, renowned artist Crusoe Kuningbal who invented, in the early 1970s the representation of mimih spirit in sculptural form for use in a trade ceremony called Mamurrng. Yalandja and his brother Crusoe Kurddal followed their father's legacy but over the years have found their own styles. In the early 1990s, Yalandja experimented with the dot patterns his father taught him, and created V shaped marks to suggest scales of the watery beings. As Yalandja says: I make it [yawkyawk] according to my individual ideas ()My father used to decorate them with dots. A long time ago, he showed me how to do this. But this style is my own, no one else does them like this. Yalandja only uses kurrajong tree for carving and carefully selects trunks which can be thin and curvilinear to give his figures a sinuous appearance.

Yalandja is now teaching his son Dustin Bonson to carve and make mimih spirits. Yalandja is also well known in the Maningrida area as a singer for the Yawkyawk style diplomacy ceremonies. His work is now represented in major Australian collections and has been exhibiting his works in many group shows since 1993.

Collections
National gallery of Australia
National gallery of Victoria
Queensland Art Gallery

Ivan Namirrkki (b.1960)
Kuninjku bark painter and sculptor, Ivan Namirrkki started to paint when he was seventeen years old under the guidance of his father Peter Marralwanga. After establishing himself as a senior bark painter in the late 1980's he stopped painting for years because art poachers were harassing him. He resumed painting in late 1998. He used to mainly depict animals and a few mythological spirits in his paintings but, quite recently, he broadened his repertoire in representing symbolic depictions of the major Kuninjku ceremonies. His work is becoming more and more abstract to a non-initiated eye as he experiments with new types of infill and new colour combinations. In innovating both in the treatment of rarrk (cross-hatching) and in the iconic representation of important Kuninjku ancestral stories, he expresses in a dynamic way his strong connections to the land and ancestral power. In his first solo show in 1999, Namirrkki's paintings were still mainly dealing with figurative and traditional representations of animals while in his second solo show in November 2002, he presented a series of paintings dealing exclusively with the representation of important sites on his clan
estate.

Ivan Namirrkki has been selected for the Arts Award 2003, 2004 and 2005 and was one of the selected artist for the 2006 clemenger contemporary art prize.

Samuel Namundja (b. 1965, Kuninjku)
Samuel Namunjdja is the son of Peter Marralwanga (c.1917-1987), and, like his brother Ivan Namirrkki, was taught to paint by his father. In the early days of his career Namunjdja's work had been influenced by a few senior artists: his father, his father-in- law Thompson Yulidjirri and more recently his brother-in-law John Mawurndjul. He has now found his own style and often depict gungura –wind dreaming-. In 1993, Namunjdja won the Rothmans Foundation Award and in 2003 he was highly commended at the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art. Namunjdja held his first solo show at Indigenart, Perth, 2002 and had another one in 2004 at Niagara galleries, Melbourne. His work has been exhibited in many exhibitions including In the Heart of Arnhem Land and the Making of Contemporary Aboriginal Art (Mantes-La-Jolie, France, 2001), Crossing Country (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2004) and Living together is easy (Contemporary Art Centre, Mito, Japan 2004), dream tracks (La fontaine Centre of Contemporary Art, Kingdom of bahrain 2006). In August 2006, he won the bark painting prize at the 23rd NATSIAA.

Jimmy An.gunguna
Rosie Bindalbindal
Samson Bonson
Selina Brian
Vicki Brown
Bonny Burarn.garra
Bob Burruwal
Ambrose Cameron
Carol Liyawanga Campion
Lena Djamarrayku
Don Djorlom
Ken Djungkidj
Michael Gadjarwala Dorothy Galaledba
George Ganyjibala
Melba Gunjarrwanga
James Iyuna
Lorna Jin-gubarrangunyja
Elizabeth Kandabuma
Hamish Karrkarrhba
Mick Kubarkku
Crusoe Kurddal
Helen Lanyinwanga
Shirley Malgarrich
Mary Marabamba
Susan Marawarr Jack Maranbarra
Elsie Marmanga
Mabel Mayangal
Robert Mibora
Shirley Minyingarla
Kate Miwulku
Marina Murdilnga
Linton Nabekeyo
Paul Nabulumo Namarinjmak
Daisy Nadjungdanga
Jack Nawilil
Irenie Ngalinba
Jill Yirrindili Terry Ngamandara
Jimmy Njiminjuma
Brian Njinawanga
Matilda Malparringa Pascoe
Margaret Rinybuma
Tommy Gondorra Steele
Betty Wanduk
Timothy Wulanjbirr
Anna Wurrkidj
Deborah Wurrkidj
Jennifer Midji Wurrkidj