Winner: Roberts Family Prize 2019
Noŋgirrŋa Marawili Pink lightning
reclaimed printer toner (ground polyester) and natural earth pigments with PVA binder
204.5 x 89 cm
Yolŋu philosophy suggests, ‘If you paint the land you should use the land’. Industrial materials dumped on the land may now be re-used in depicting the land. This work includes magenta toner from smashed, discarded printer cartridges. This place is Baraltja, north of Cape Shield in the Gulf of Carpentaria. These are cyclonic, crocodile-infested waters with huge tides and ripping currents. Rocks are set in deep water between the electric ‘curse’ that the lighting snake spits into the sky and the sea spray from the ocean waves trying to shift the rocks’ immovable foundation.
Noŋgirrŋa Marawili, 2019
This work was awarded the Roberts Family Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Prize 2019.