Buwathay Munyarryun

(born 1962)

The Teeth of the Maypal, 2016

Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala (cat.4752O)
Corporate collection, Sydney

The accompanying Buku-Larrnggay Mulka documentation reads:
"This is a traditional form of Waŋgurri pole that has not been made for sale before the death of the artist's father who released the permission to share it. The artist calls it the Teeth of the Maypal (shellfish). This pole is a Waŋgurri log which has ancestral significance in the creation of landscapes and cosmology belonging to this clan.

It is like an Ancestral being travelling in country of both salt and freshwater environs, and is associated with androgyny and metamorphism. It can have a feminine shape as the Wet Season cumulonimbus (and also as an analogue of Ŋoykal, the kingfish) and also in cross section with the wood-chewing jaws of a mangrove worm closed in a more male guise, the rock, exposed at low tide, its foundation in the land below the sacred waters.

The design on the pole relates to the journey of such a pole through Wangurri clan waters. In saltwaters belonging to that clan from their homeland at Mutamul towards their freshwater homeland at Dhalinybuy. The minyj or sacred clan design can have different meanings. One is a manifestation in the tracks left in timber from infestation from the boring mangrove worm Milka. Bands of miny'tji represents this and by the layering of hair brush strokes, that build up to a shimmering and brilliant state, itself a manifestation (we can only imagine) of the sublime and to the references this painting could have of the end results of supernatural events and the peace brought after as rays of sun on the calm waters, a condition called gunbilk. Out there in the still distance clouds line the horizon (triangles). The waters that travel through the mangrove areas, (where the Milka infest the wood), that wash with the tides to be taken with the currents out deep to the horizons meet with associate waters from other estates relative to the Wangurri, such as the Maŋgalili. These waters contain the life forces and clan identity and are taken up into the maternal clouds and as dots amongst the waters supporting the totem octopus Manda and the yothu (child) as the elliptical shapes, cuttle fish shells floating on the surface. These worms die as the pole itself a being washes into the freshwater. This causes the rotting of the wood and the shortened 'jaw' at the top of the pole which distinguishes this shape as a Wangurri rather than Manggalili pole."

image: third larrakitj from the left