John Mawurndjul, 2005

John Mawurndjul (b. 1952) is a Kuningkju-speaking man who lives near Maningrida, one of the Northern Territory's oldest and best-equipped art centres. Over the past twenty-five years has become acknowledged as Australia's greatest living bark painter and one of its most important artists in any medium. Photographed the day before flying to Paris to work on a commission for the Quai Branly museum in 2005, the following year Mawurndjul became the only Australian artist to have been given a retrospective by two leading European museums - the Tinguely in Basel and the Sprengel in Hanover. The delicate traceries of lines - called rarrk - in his paintings are drawn from the Mardayin ceremony, a sacred and secret rite of the Kuningkju culture. Raark lines take weeks to paint in a mixture of ochre, water and glue with a brush made out of only a few long hairs, but John McDonald writes that the calm artist gives every appearance of having 'all the time in the world'.

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of R. Ian Lloyd 2010
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
© R. Ian Lloyd/Copyright Agency, 2020