John Mawurndjul

John Mawurndjul is an innovator who has revolutionised Kuninjku bark painting, transforming it from an iconic art form into a metaphysical form of abstraction that has a compelling and esoteric geometry. Building on the work of leading Kuninjku artists Yirawala, Marralwanga and Njiminjuma before him, Mawurndjul has forged a new way of painting out of the old, transforming the dot infill X-ray method derived from rock art, into a series of abstract tableaux composed entirely of masses of rarrk (cross-hatching), unrelieved by figurative motifs. His complex and understated geometry, which is made up of infinitesimal, moire-like cross-hatched variations – occasioning multiple shifts and optical gyrations within the paint layer – is no longer contained within the figurative envelope of an ancestral being, but takes up the entire surface of the bark and is the central focus of his painting. The rarrk itself is indicative of ancestral potency and points to hidden inside layers of the Mardayin ceremony. The Mardayin is not often performed today, but it was the first secret ceremony into which Mawurndjul was initiated as a young man and left a lasting impression on his development as an artist.

Judith Ryan
Senior Curator, Indigenous Art, National Gallery of Victoria
Excerpt from exhibition catalogue

John Mawurndjul
Kuninjku born c. 1952
Mardayin at Dilebang, 2003
earth pigments with PVA fixative on stringybark
212.0 x 98.0 cm
Courtesy of the artist and Maningrida Arts and Culture, Northern Territory