Artiste : Mulkun Wirrpanda (1942)

Titre de l'œuvre : Ŋäḏi ga Guṉdirr (Mulkun- meat ants and termites)

Format : 128 x 67 cm

Provenance et certificat : Yirrkala

Référence de cette peinture : 557-19

Explications sur cette peinture Aborigène :

This work is an extension of a phase where the artist of her own motion explored lesser known plant species which she feared were being forgotten by younger generations. This coincided with artist John Wolseley’s interest in returning to Yilpara (after they had met during the Djalkiri project of 2010) and the two spent an extended period exploring the botany of Blue Mud Bay.

John Wolseley spent a week at Yilpara with Mulkun in May 2012 and again at Yirrkala in June 2013, June 2014 and then May and December 2015.

Mulkun has been finding new ways to paint and promote nutritional plants that are no longer eaten widely. As a child there were very many healthy old people and now there are few. In those days old people lived for a long time without illness. She blames poor diet and the loss of knowledge.

In 2017 accompanying Mulkun and John Wolseley's NMA show Miḏawarr | Harvest, the book of the same name was published with words by Mulkun Wirrpanda (MW), Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs (MGS), Greg Leach (GL) and Glenn Wightman (GW).

Following this theme she moved on to painting varieties of Maypal or shellfish and these were exhibited in a sold out show at Salon in Darwin in August 2018. This then morphed to a series of work where she painted shellfish which lived symbiotically with edible plants.

In this work she has continued with the concept of symbioses and in this case eusociality. She has depicted the relationship between munyukuluŋu Magnetic termites Amitermes meridionalis, or compass termite, a speciesof eusocial insect in the family Termitidae…

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© Photo : Aboriginal Signature Estrangin gallery with the courtesy of the artists & Yiirkala.