NARRITJIN MAYMURU, Gulwarrk - Ancestral Creator Spirit, 1964

NARRITJIN MAYMURU Dhuwal language, c.1922 - 1981 Gulwarrk - Ancestral Creator Spirit, 1964 ochre on bark 119 x 32 cm (irregular); 134 x 47.5 cm (framed) bears labels verso: Deutscher and Hackett and Aboriginal Art Centre, Aratjara PROVENANCE The Artist, painted in the Yirrkala region, North-East Arnhem Land, Northern Territory Aboriginal Art Centre, New South Wales Beryl and Jack Kohane Collection, Victoria Deutscher and Hackett, Important Australian, International + Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, Victoria, 26 November 2014, Lot 115 Private Collection, New South Wales EXHIBITED Aratjara: Art of the First Australians, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, Germany, 24 April – 4 July 1993; Hayward Gallery, London, 23 July – 10 October 1993; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark, 11 February – 23 May 1994; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 23 June – 15 August 1994 LITERATURE Aratjara: Art of the First Australians, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, Germany, 1993, cat. 47, p. 176 (illus.) Narritjin Maymuru was a senior ceremonial leader and artist of North East Arnhem Land. By 1964, he had moved decisively from the hardwood carving that occupied much of the previous decade into the prolific bark painting practice for which he is now best known, and this work belongs to the period Morphy identifies as the height of his output, immediately following his role as an instigator of the Yirrkala Church Panels in 1962.* This bark draws on Manggalili cosmology centred on Djarrakpi, the clan's estate at Cape Shield in Blue Mud Bay. At its heart is Gulwarrk, an ancestral creator spirit of the night, whose presence anchors the composition to a deeper song-line binding figure, country and law as one. The painting exemplifies the visual language of the Manggalili clan at its most refined. Diamonds, dashes, anvil shapes and X motifs, drawn from the breast girdle worn by ancestral women in mourning ceremonies, build a dense, rhythmic ground across the bark. Against this field, the figurative elements are held in restrained black outline, a hallmark of Narritjin's ability to fuse aesthetic precision with meaning that runs deeper than the surface reveals. The work carries strong exhibition credentials, having featured in Aratjara: Art of the First Australians, the landmark touring exhibition that travelled to Düsseldorf, London, Humlebaek and Melbourne in 1993 and 1994, where it was illustrated in the accompanying catalogue. *Howard Morphy, in Tradition Today: Indigenous Art in Australia (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2014). **Franchesca Cubillo and Wally Caruana, eds., Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art: Collection Highlights (Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2010). © NARRITJIN MAYMURU / Copyright Agency, 2026

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