Lightning in the rock
2015
- Medium
- earth pigments on Stringybark (Eucalyptus sp.)
- Measurements
- 310.6 × 110.0 cm
- Place/s of Execution
- Yirrkala, Northern Territory
- Accession Number
- 2016.37
- Department
- First Nations Australia
- Credit Line
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, NGV Supporters of Indigenous Art, 2016
© Nonggirrnga Marawili, courtesy of Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala - Gallery location
- Gallery 2
Ground Level, NGV Australia - About this work
-
Ms N. Marawili was the daughter of esteemed artist and warrior, Mundukul. During the 1980s Ms N. began assisting her late husband, Djutadjuta Mununggurr, a leader of the Djapu clan, to paint. This formative time imparted upon her the authority to paint Djapu narratives, a trajectory she sustained after her husband passed. Having grown up during a time where Yolŋu women were restricted from painting, Ms N. was unsure about her capacity to draw on her father’s stories, however, over time she developed a strong visual vocabulary that encoded Madarrpa forms.
This work represents Baratjula, the Madarrpa clan estate adjacent to Cape Shield where the Mundukul, the lightning snake, lives deep beneath the sea. The artist shows the sacred rock set in deep water between the electric ‘curse’ that the snake spits into the sky in the form of lightning, and the spray of the sea trying to shift the immovable rock foundation of the Madarrpa people. The scale of Lightning in the Rock captures the intensity of the narrative: at the time it was painted, it was one of the largest bark panels ever made, a testament to Ms N. Marawili’s bold and experimental practice.