SACRED KANGAROO (KUNDAAGI) AND NORTHERN BANDICOOT, late 1960s

Important Aboriginal Works of Art
Melbourne
25 May 2016
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37

YIRAWALA

(c.1895 – 1976)
SACRED KANGAROO (KUNDAAGI) AND NORTHERN BANDICOOT, late 1960s

natural earth pigments on eucalyptus bark

87.0 x 48.0 cm (irreg.)

bears inscription verso: cat. U/500 and old descriptive label

Estimate: 
$14,000 – 18,000
Sold for $28,060 (inc. BP) in Auction 43 - 25 May 2016, Melbourne
Provenance

Most likely executed at Minjilang,
Croker Island, Western Arnhem Land
Dorothy Bennett, Darwin (descriptive label verso)
Private collection, United States of America, acquired by the vendor from Robert Ypes at the Native Art Gallery, Paddington, Sydney in 1970

Related works

Other examples of Kundaagi bark paintings are held in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, see Michael, L., (ed.), They are Meditating, Bark Painting from the MCA's Arnott's Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2008, pp. 202 – 204
For related paintings in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia collected by Sandra Le Brun Holmes in the 1960s and 1970s see Holmes, S., Yirawala: Painter of the Dreaming, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1994, pl. 51, 54 and 133

Catalogue text

Kundaagi, the Red Plains Kangaroo, is the ancestral being for whom the first Lorrkkon (second burial ceremony) was performed in western Arnhem Land. His mother, the creator ancestress Yingarna had collected the bones of the dead kangaroo and placed them inside a hollow log, also known as a Lorrkkon, and performed a second burial ceremony. Subsequently the ceremony has been performed by the Kunwinjku and Kuninjku people to mark the safe arrival of the soul of the deceased to the ancestral realm.

The x-ray style of painting employed by Yirawala is characteristic of western Arnhem Land art and here features the internal organs of the kangaroo (the heart, liver, stomach and intestines), as well as the ribs and backbone, thus linking the image to death and the burial ceremony. The figure of Kundaagi is decorated in clan designs such as those painted onto the bodies of performers in the ceremony. Yirawala has drawn a variant of the design onto the figures of the three northern bandicoots which are likely to represent young initiates, probably from a different clan to that of the deceased, who attend Lorrkkon ceremonies for educational purposes. Kundaagi and the Lorrkkon ceremony is a recurring theme in Yirawala’s oeuvre.

WALLY CARUANA