Lightning and the Rock

Like the majority of artists working at Yirrkala, Noŋgirrŋa Marawili comes from an esteemed artistic family. Her father is the famed Yolŋu leader Mundukul, who completed crayon drawing for the anthropologist Ronald Berndt in 1947, while her husband is Djutjadjutja Munuŋgurr and for many years Marawili assisted him with the cross hatching on his bark paintings. Marawili began her career as a printmaker and has experimented with a variety of printmaking techniques since 1998. She is also an exceptional painter creating extraordinary works on bark, larrakitj and paper.

Marawili’s recent prints are centred on the location of Baratjula within Blue Mud Bay, which is of particular importance to Madarrpa people. The waters of this bay have been described as cyclonic, and crocodile infested, and Marawili captures the dramatic nature of this environment in her works. Zigzagging lines across the works refer to the dramatic lightning of the wet season, trails of dots evoke the sea spray that flies into the air as the water crashes against the rocks that line the shore, white simple geometric forms denote the rocks themselves, with their permanence within these treacherous conditions corresponding to the solidity of Madarrpa culture.