Throughout the 1940s Margaret Preston travelled extensively across Queensland, South Australia, New South Wales and the Northern Territory. These journeys greatly influenced the next chapter of Preston’s artistic life, moving her focus from still lifes towards expansive landscapes, as well as shaping her colour palette to include earthy ochres, deep reds and oranges, and dense blacks.
During these trips, Preston visited the Tiwi Islands twice – first in 1940 and again in 1947. On her second visit Preston acquired two tunga, which she then gifted to the Australian Museum the following year. Tunga are bark baskets from the Tiwi Islands used for carrying water and collecting food. They are also important ceremonial objects used in Pukumani – the Tiwi mourning ritual. Beyond their practical use, they feature in the Tiwi creation story, particularly through Murtankala, who is said to have used a tunga to hold her children. The baskets are crafted from folded sheets of eucalyptus bark and held together using locally sourced fibres, known as bush string, and natural fixatives such as beeswax and plant sap. Intricate designs indicative of ancestral stories, knowledge or kinship relations are then applied in ochre. The Margaret Preston exhibition features the two historical tunga collected by Preston, alongside three newly acquired contemporary tunga produced by senior artists Kaye Brown, Raelene Kerinauia Lampuwatu and Mary Elizabeth Moreen, each responding to Preston’s paintings from the 1940s.
Brown describes the tunga as both a practical object and an essential part of ceremonial life:
‘Old people used tunga to collect and carry yingiti (bush food), they would put it in there to take home. They also used to store ceremonial ornaments in there, somewhere where it was safe to keep and reuse them. That design in ochre colours we paint for ceremony using kayimwagakimi (the ironwood painting comb). That ochre design we call yirinkirripwoja – it is face-painting design for the dancers. The face painting is to please the ancestors, the loved ones. This frees their spirit … this is what Pukumani ceremony is for, freeing the spirits of our passed ancestors to be at rest on Country.’
Kerinauia Lampuwatu’s Liddy (Lampuwatu) tunga features a design recalling woven pandanus floor mats once made in Milikapiti, linking family memory with ceremonial tradition. She describes the role of tunga and tutini – the carves and painted poles created for Pukamani ceremony:
‘We decorate these tunga with ochre designs when we use them for ceremony. When the Pukumani is over we put them on top of the Tutini and we leave them there forever. It is a gift for the ancestors for their journey back to Country.’
For Moreen, the making of a tunga begins on Country, selecting suitable eucalyptus bark before carefully preparing and painting its surface. Her basket depicts pandanus, waterlilies and bush apples, celebrating plants that sustain both people and place, demonstrating the intimate relationship between cultural practice and the natural environment.
Together, these artists extend the conversation begun by Preston’s visits to the Tiwi Islands almost eighty years ago. These contemporary responses help to reveal the deeper meanings embedded within tunga – the objects shaped by ceremony, kinship and Country.
Beckett Rozentals is NGV Senior Curator, Australian Art.
Kaye Brown is a senior Tiwi woman who began painting in 2012. Her Country is Andranangoo (Goose Creek), her kin is Takaringuwi (Scaly Mullet), and her dance is Tartuwali (Shark).
Raelene Kerinauia Lampuwatu is a senior Tiwi artist and was one of the founders of Jilamara Arts and Crafts. Her Country is Mantiyupwi, her skin is Wantaringuwi (Sun) and she now lives and works on Lives and works on Milikapiti, Melville Island, Northern Territory.
Mary Elizabeth Moreen is a Traditional Land Owner of Milikapiti and the surrounding area to Karslake, an area known as Wulirankuwu Country. She paints with locally sourced ochres on paper, canvas and bark, and also weaves with pandanus found on the island.
The NGV warmly thanks Jan Bagley and Bruce Herbes for acquiring the three contemporary tunga mentioned for the Collection.