Installation view of lorrkkon (log coffins) in the exhibition John Mawurndjul: I am the old and the new (2018) at Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Photo: ArtsHub.
Bark painting is usually perceived as a traditional art form, one with origins over 65,000 years old. It is probably not what you expect to find visiting one of Australia’s most cutting edge contemporary art museums. But the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) has just unveiled a major survey of John Mawurndjul’s work that situates bark painting at the very heart of contemporary art practice.
Senior Curator, MCA, Natasha Bullock told ArtsHub: ‘I think every artist has a world view in the way that they work, and John is no different. Yes, bark has a long history, but the way the subjects manifest on the surface is utterly contemporary – the rhythm, the energy, the power, the palette, the way they are made, the subjects.’
Walking into the space and seeing these barks gently reflected on polished concrete floors seems to make sense. Lisa Slade, Co-acting Director, Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) added: ‘There has been plenty of international attention for John Mwaurndjul but insufficient national attention, so this is a very important show in bringing together a life’s work for Australian audiences.’
John Mawurndjul: I am the old and the new takes another contemporary tone through its curatorial authorship and partnership, and points to a more egalitarian museological practice of our times.
Slade and Bullock are part of a curatorium that has developed the exhibition, co-curated by the MCA and the AGSA, in association with Maningrida Ars & Culture. The exhibition will travel to the AGSA in October.
Slade said that of the 160 bark paintings and sculptures on show, 63 have been loaned back from national and international collections. ‘This idea of homecoming is a very powerful premise of the exhibition, and that is no easy feat when you are dealing with some of the most fragile, delicate works of art ever.’
Three years in the making, the exhibition spans 40 years of making, with some of the earliest barks dating back to the late 1960s. It is an incredibly elegant exhibition, and through it the viewer is gently ushered into a very dynamic and nuanced world of bark painting.
Installation view of the exhibition John Mawurndjul: I am the old and the new (2018) at Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Photo: ArtsHub
Why these barks are so contemporary
Nici Cumpston – Artistic Director, TARNANTHI Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art (AGSA) – said that Mawurndjul is very engaged with the work of other artists and has travelled extensively. ‘His interest in art expands and extends beyond his own practice,’ said Cumpston. ‘When he is looking at art, he steps back, thinks and talks about it. He will say, “The djang – the (spirit) power – it is like my work”. She recently travelled with him in Berlin.
Bullock said that Mawurndjul will, ‘physically walk his work into the bush, turn and walk away, and then look back and see if it is giving the energy that it needs to give. The word djang actually translates as the painting “jumping out at you,” saying that was no different to what any artist would do in their studio.
Slade added that this idea of power in an artwork is not exclusive to Aboriginal art, or in the rarrking (cross hatching) that Mawurndjul is so well known for. ‘This is very consistent in many ways with the way contemporary artists work, and think of themselves – constantly testing ideas and pushing their practice.’
Mawurndjul is a prolific living artist, who is cognisant of the world around him and relays that into the art that he makes. And in that, by definition, his work is quintessentially contemporary.
Mawurndjul’s own words perhaps best sum up that bridge of perception between old and new. ‘I am John Mawurndjul and I am telling the history about long ago and the time of my ancestors and also the new time of the new generation … The cross hatching is only what we see on the surface, like the skin, but the old people have their history, as do the new generation … but me, I have two ways – I am the old and I am the new.’
This is an Artist-led exhibition
At 66, John Mawurndjul has led the curatorial decisions for this exhibition, driving the selection of the most significant artworks from his career.
Bullock said that the MCA always privileges artists curatorially in the way they work. She continued: ‘We worked very closely with Genevieve O’Callaghan – a very talented researcher and writer – who gathered together 700 works across Australia and the world, going to Manigrida and looking at their data bases, finding private works through auction houses etc. and then we took images of those 700 works and went them to John and he chose the most powerful and critical works that speak to him. He would say, “that is a lovely one,” or “this is good to see this again”.’
Bullock said that Mawurndjul then determined that he wanted the exhibition grouped by kunred (places of cultural significance), then to place the mimihs figures together, all the animals and spirits together, the lorrkkon (log coffins) in another gallery, and the etchings off to the side.
Installation view of the exhibition John Mawurndjul: I am the old and the new (2018) at Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Photo: ArtsHub.
‘That conversation enabled the methodology we put into place for the hang,’ said Bullock. Slade added: ‘If you travel in a clockwise direction [through the exhibition] you do a life-cycle with the show and come out with mortuary ceremony and the lorrkkon.’
Language is also an important component of this presentation, with bilingual texts embedded throughout the exhibition design – from the didactics and labels available in Kuninjku, to translated texts in the catalogue and a dedicated micro-website, johnmawurndjul.com, which includes audio recorded in Arnhem Land where Mawurndjul speaks in detail about his art practice and history. It also offers an explanation of place names and their significance to the exhibition, recordings of linguist and anthropologist Murray Garde on language, and a glossary accompanied by recordings of Kuninjku language by John Mawurndjul and his family.
The importance of a curatorium and research
Cumpston told ArtsHub: ‘We have all relied on each other; it is not tokenism.’
Underlying this exhibition is a big research and curatorial team. It has been co-curated by Slade, Cumpston and Bullock along with Clothilde Bullen (Curator, Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Collections and Exhibitions, MCA), and Keith Munro (Curator, Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Programs, MCA) who has been lead Cultural Advisor for the project, as well as a team from Maningrida Arts & Culture.
Why so many, and how does that impact the nuance of an exhibition that is culturally specific? Bullock said: ‘If you bring two organisations and a curatorium together you end up with more ideas’.
Cumpston added that it was a whole team project with gallery educators and installation teams travelling to work together and share knowledge. ‘Each of us have learnt so much about the other organsiation – you don’t normally get that insight.’
Slade continued: ‘The process of research was very much led by the MCA and this recovery, or repatriation, of some of the names of these works was an important part of it. When many of these works came into collections early on they were often stripped of their Kuninjku titles, so there is a lot of work that has happened that may not be at first visible in returning the works culturally.’
Both MCA and AGSA acquired their first work by Mawurndjul in 1989, putting them on an even platform when telling this story.
Installation view of Mimih works in the exhibition John Mawurndjul: I am the old and the new (2018) at Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Photo: ArtsHub.
Embracing the word ‘Master’
John Mawurndjul AM is described as a master bark painter. That word “master” is one not often used today.
Bullock told ArtsHub: ‘The way he can put together a composition; the way he manages a rarrk; to be able to give the bark that power, that energy – not many artists can say that of their work, and still be interesting. It is a really great achievement.’
The curators explained: ‘His early explorations on bark in the late 1970s yielded to the conventions of bark painting at that time: figurative work depicting images of the Ngalyod (an ancestral Rainbow Serpent), Namarrkon (the female lightning spirit) and depictions of the rich resources found on his country – turtles, fish (particularly the Saratoga, barramundi and Grunter), crocodile and other creatures.
‘During the 1990s, his work began to shift in style, and he started to address the significant sites of his custodial country. The artist also began to make a concentrated body of sculptural work, including the hollow log coffins and representations of the mimih spirit beings. More recently, Mawurndjul’s practice has developed to reflect in more detail the Mardayin ceremony; shimmering geometric grids of rarrk (cross-hatching), and djang (a sacred site or totemic emblem) in a complete mastery of bark painting that borders on abstraction.’
Since his first exhibition in 1980, Mawurndjul has become one of Australia’s most widely recognised artists, especially internationally.
In 1988, he won the Rothman’s Foundation Award for best painting at the fifth annual National Aboriginal Art Awards at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory; he was also included in the group exhibition Dreamings, in New York City that same year. The following year, his work was included in the landmark exhibition Magiciens de la Terre at the Centre Georges Pompidou and Grande Halle de la Villete in Paris, which played an important role in changing the way his work was appreciated.
That year both the MCA and AGSA acquired works by Mawurndjul which today are the cornerstones of their collection – and this exhibition.
Mawurndjul exhibited in Japan in 1992, the Sydney Biennale in 2000, and in Aratjara: Art of the First Australians in Germany and the UK and In the Heart of Arnhem Land in France in 2001.
In 2005 he was honoured with a major retrospective of his work at the Musee Jean Tinguely in Basel, Switzerland. Mawurndjul created work for the Musee du Quai Branly’s Australian Indigenous Art Commission in 2004, being one of only eight Aboriginal artists included. In 2010 was awarded an Order of Australia, and earlier this year, received the highly prestigious Red Ochre Award at the Australia Council for the Arts, National Indigenous Art Awards, for his outstanding lifetime achievement in the arts.
John Mawurndjul: I am the old and the new is showing at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia from 6 July – 23 September 2018. Thereafter it will be presented at the Art Gallery of South Australia from 26 October 2018 until 28 January 2019 at Art Gallery of South Australia, as part of TARNANTHI.
A smaller version of the exhibition will then tour regionally to eight locations across Australia until 2020: Murray Art Museum Albury (NSW), Glasshouse Port Macquarie (NSW), Drill Hall Gallery, ANU (ACT), Blue Mountains Cultural Centre (NSW), Cairns Regional Gallery (QLD), Charles Darwin University Art Gallery (NT), Tweed Regional Gallery (NSW) and Bunjil Place Gallery (VIC).
Cumpston concluded: ‘Travelling nationally gives this exhibition a life. If you are going to put so much energy – three years of making and researching and conversations into it – then let’s give it a life beyond the Art Gallery and the MCA.’
