John Mawurndjul, 1986

John Mawurndjul (b. 1952), Kuninjku bark painter and hollow-log coffinmaker, has emerged as one of the leading contemporary Australian painters over the last twenty years. Following his contribution to the Aboriginal Memorial and his win in the fifth National Aboriginal Art Award of 1988, his work featured in the international exhibitions Dreamings (1988), Magiciens de la Terre (1989), l’ete Australien (1990), Crossroads (1992), Aratjara (1993-4), Eye of the Storm (1996), In Place (Out of Time) and World of Dreamings (2000). He won the Clemenger Contemporary Art Prize in 2003, exhibited at the Jean Tinguely Museum in Switzerland in 2005 and was one of eight Australian Aboriginal artists commissioned to make a mural for the heart of Paris’s Musée de Quai Branly, which opened in 2006. Many of his early works depict Ngalyod, the rainbow serpent, with the yawkyawk, a figure somewhat like a mermaid; more recently, figures in his work have been all-but supplanted in seemingly abstract, yet potently meaningful, geometric patterns applied in dazzlingly fine, intricate crosshatching (rarrk). Mawurndjul’s work is held by all major Australian galleries including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2005
© Martin van der Wal