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Jimmy Njiminjuma
(Australia 1947–02 Oct 2004)
- Language group
- Kuninjku, Arnhem region
- Title
- Yawkyawk
- Other titles:
- Yawk Yawk figure
Yawkyawk figure - Place of origin
-
Mumeka →
Central Arnhem Land →
Northern Territory →
Australia
- Cultural origin
- Maningrida Arts and Culture
- Year
- 2000
- Media category
- Bark painting
- Materials used
- natural pigments on eucalyptus bark
- Dimensions
-
157.0 x 63.0cm (irreg.)
- Signature & date
- Not signed. Not dated.
- Credit
- Mollie Gowing Acquisition Fund for Contemporary Aboriginal Art 2001
- Accession number
- 446.2001
- Copyright
- © Jimmy Njiminjuma. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney
- Location
- Yiribana Gallery
- Further information
Jimmy Njiminjuma is currently one of the most senior artists in the western Arnhem Land region. For many years he lived with his father, Anchor Kulunba, at Mumeka outstation. Njiminjuma says that his father and his uncle Peter Marralwanga showed him how to paint. In the 1980s Njiminjuma took a strong role in teaching his younger brother John Mawurndjul the art of bark painting. Njiminjuma has now established an outstation at Kurrurldul on Mimarlar Creek, a tributary of the Tomkinson River, south of Maningrida.
Njiminjuma is adept at painting a number of subjects, and one of his recurring themes is the yawkyawk. These figures are understood to be a kind of female water sprite, and the Kuninjku often paint them with the forked tail of a fish and long flowing hair likened to the trailing waterweed of freshwater streams. In 'Yawkyawk', 2000, Njiminjuma depicts the form of the spirit being, embedded in the sacred landscape of Milmingkan, in his clan lands. The rarrk (crosshatched) designs at the left of the painting represent the banks of the waterhole, and the fork-tailed figure is shown outlined against a field of rarrk that represents the site.
Part of the creativity in Njiminjuma's painting is evident in his ability to construct complex figures that merge with the geometric background designs. These designs have their basis in the body paintings of the Mardayin ceremony, in which the participants are marked with images of the landscape that is their birth heritage. In bark paintings, the incorporation of geometric designs and figurative elements reveals Kuninjku beliefs in how certain landscape forms were moulded by the creative actions of ancestral beings. The ancestral beings entered the earth at these special places and exist there still as an animating life force.
Luke Taylor in 'Tradition today: Indigenous art in Australia', Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2004
© Art Gallery of New South Wales
- Bibliography (4)
-
Hetti Perkins (Australia), Crossing country: the alchemy of western Arnhem Land art, Sydney, 2004, front cover (colour illus., detail), 77 (colour illus.), 229.
Hetti Perkins (Australia) (Author), Theresa Willsteed (Editor), Tradition today: Indigenous art in Australia, Domain, 2004, 112 (colour illus.), 113 (colour illus., detail).
'Site and subject'., Crossing country: the alchemy of western Arnhem Land art 2004, 2004, (colour illus.).
'Year in review', pg. 8-25., Art Gallery of New South Wales Annual Report 2002 2002, 2002, 9.
- Exhibition history (2)
-
Crossing country: the alchemy of Western Arnhem Land art, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 24 Sep 2004–12 Dec 2004.
Country Culture Community (2008-09), Art Gallery of New South Wales, 12 Nov 2008–19 Apr 2009.
