rarrkJOHN MAWURNDJUL
Journey through time in Northern Australia
The Museum der Kulturen Basel
guest of the Museum Tinguely

This first retrospective of John Mawurndjul’s work in a European museum gathers some 70 works, the majority paintings on eucalyptus bark that correspond to the various periods of his career, as well as some sculptures and prints. It also presents, in collaboration with the Museum der Kulturen Basel, 35 paintings on tree bark by painters from an older generation grouped together by Karel Kupka, who was one of the first researchers to try to understand the Aboriginal painters and to regard them as full fledged artists with a figurative heritage, and to draw up an inventory of their work.

An Innovator

John Mawurndjul is an innovator who has revolutionized Kuninjku painting on bark. He was born in 1952 on the lands of his clan, in Northern Australia, where the absence of a written language led to the development of a very rich iconographic tradition. He learned to paint according to tradition, by painting motifs on the bodies of the initiated. But he started painting on the bark of eucalyptus very early. Inspired by the rock paintings of his ancestors, he then developed his own way of treating traditional images. He now creates them in a new form, and in particular with new intentions. The format is larger, the support remains the bark of the eucalyptus, but the natural pigments– red ochre, yellow ochre, chalk, charcoal – are combined with an agglutinant.

A fruitful confrontation with tradition

John Mawurndjul’s work goes beyond Aboriginal tradition and is no longer limited to the genius of thunder or the creative spirits that randomly give mortals life or death. He modifies this pictorial tradition in a continuous process of transformation. Representations of figurative reality are integrated in a web of lines that go to the limits of what can be represented - rarrk in kuninjku language – formally condensed and encrypted. This evolution contradicts the prejudice strongly anchored in European minds that denies indigenous artists a personality and a capacity to innovate outside of the context of their community authority. His work proves the confrontation can be fruitful as long as tradition is no longer seen as an anonymous and unchangeable corset.

Illustration: JIMMY MIDJAWMIDJAW (1897-1985), Female Namarrkon, lightning spirit and kangaroo, 1960,Croker Island. Earth pigments on eucalyptus bark, 62.0 x 92.0 cm. Museum der Kulturen Basel, Coll. Karel Kupka. Va 1187

A form of world contemporary art

This voyage through time in Northern Australia leads us from rock paintings over 30 000 years old that mark the sacred sites of the aborigines to our time. Little by little the doors of the art world open towards a wider and more global understanding. The academic circles are still too entrenched in old strategies of exclusion and refusal and non-western art is relegated to the museum of ethnography. This exhibit intends to open the dialogue towards a form of world contemporary art. The work of John Mawurndjul must be regarded in the global context of contemporary art. A symposium accompanying the exhibit will focus on that precisely from the 22nd to the 24th of September

Illustration: JOHN MAWURNDJUL, Ancestral beings collecting honey, 1985-87. Earth pigments on eucalyptus bark, 110.5 x 61.0 cm Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and Maningrida Arts & Culture with financial assistance from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Board of the Australia Council. 1994.346 © John Mawurndjul, courtesy Maningrida Arts & Culture Photo: Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

PUBLICATION

Catalogue of the exhibition, German / English, directed by Christian Kaufmann, 200 p. 160 colour ills. and 40 black & white. Verlag Schwabe AG CHF 42

To see more illustrations, click on VERSION FRANCAISE at the top of this page