Bol'nu Djapu
2017
Medium
enamel paint on on laminated aluminium
Measurements
150.0 × 100.0 cm
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2021
© Noŋgirrŋa Marawili, courtesy of Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala
Gallery location
Gallery 1
Ground Level, NGV Australia
About this work
Like many First Nations communities, Yolŋu people from north-east Arnhem land have strict codes determining who has authority to depict certain designs, based on clan, moiety and family relations. In the 1980s Ms N. Marawili began assisting her late husband, Djutadjuta Munuŋgurr, a leader of the Djapu clan, to paint. During this formative time she was given the authority to paint Djapu narratives (despite being a Maḏarrpa woman), a practice she sustained after her husband passed. Having grown up at a time when Yolŋu women were restricted from painting, she was unsure about her capacity to draw on her father’s stories; however, over time she developed a strong visual vocabulary that encoded Maḏarrpa forms too. This composition shows the spiritual residence for two ancestral beings, Mäna the shark and Bol’ŋu the Thunderman. Inspired by the actions of Bol’ŋu, rain feeds rivers and fills billabongs, transforming this sacred landscape.
Artwork Details
Place/s of Execution
Yirrkala, Northern Territory
Accession Number
2021.605
Department
First Nations Australia