Djunuŋgayaŋu 2008, Yathikpa 2008 & Djunuŋgayaŋu 2008
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Napuwarri Marawili
Maḏarrpa. Born 1967, Yilpara, Arnhem Land. Lives and works in Yilpara and Yirrkala, Arnhem Land, Northern Territory.
"Djunuŋgayaŋu" 2008
earth pigments on hollowed pole
Collection of the University of Queensland, purchased 2011
"Yathikpa" 2008
earth pigments on hollowed pole
Collection of the University of Queensland, purchased 2011
"Djunuŋgayaŋu" 2008
earth pigments on hollowed pole
Collection of the University of Queensland, purchased 2011
Napuwarri Marawili’s practice is directly related to his cultural obligations and custodianship of Yolŋu Country, particularly sea Country in Blue Mud Bay, Arnhem Land. Marawili sustains these responsibilities by painting Manikay (sacred songs) of this intertidal zone, where saltwater and freshwater meet. His poles depict Djunuŋgayaŋu (dugongs) eating gamata (seagrass) in the shallow sunlit waters—imagery drawn from the visual symbolism taught by Napuwarri’s father, senior artist Bakulaŋay Marawili. Set in the ocean waters in the Yathikpa region, near Blue Mud Bay (the site of the storied case around legal sea Country title), the designs on the hollowed carved poles strategically conceal sacred information that recounts the origin stories of place. The works embed water protection within cultural preservation by recollecting the cultural significance of creation events and sites. The artist tells of the memorial poles:
"The story is of two ancestral figures, Burrak and Garramatji, who went hunting for dugong in the Yathikpa area. They travelled in a canoe named Badapada and carried with them a harpoon named Gutjulu. Their hunting took them into a forbidden and spiritually dangerous area near the sacred rock Martjala. They threw the Gutjulu but missed the dugong, and the harpoon along with the rope went into the rock and caused a fire. The ocean boiled and the canoe of the two men capsized, and they died. Burrak and Garramatji turned into Yikawanga and Ngurruguyamirri. This can be understood as an oral and painted history of an actual tsunami in geologic times.
Yathikpa is fire-imbued saltwater from which Baru, the metamorphosed Maḏarrpa man in crocodile form, brought fire ashore. Fire represents a profound knowledge that takes wisdom and courage to handle correctly.
The hunter’s harpoon floats incessantly between the various coastal saltwater estates. It is also here that the feminine thunderclouds take up lifegiving water to rain back over the hinterlands, thence to flow through Baraltja, a tidal creek, and meet the saltwater tidal surge. The transformation of saltwater into fresh and back into salt mirrors the soul as it changes its outward form from corporeal to ethereal."