Solidarity: Inscriptions for the future. Winsome Jobling, Djirrirra Wununmurra & Mulkun Wirrpanda — 22 June to 27 July 2019

Just before the Australian Federal election in May 2019, the level of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere reached a record high: the earth is now the hottest it has ever been. A grim United Nations report stated one million plant and animal species are on the verge of extinction due to human activity.

The re-election of a conservative government means the Adani coal mine and other leases in the vast Galilee Basin will go ahead, as will investments in fracking, coal seam gas and offshore drilling especially in the Northern Territory, and Australia will remain on track in its failure to reach its carbon dioxide targets. It is now two years since The Uluru Statement from the Heart was endorsed by Indigenous Australia. Will the statement continue to be stamped by the government with the patronising words “too likely to fail”? How do we visualise a future?

The botanical paintings, drawings and prints in the exhibition Solidarity: Inscriptions for the Future embody layers of metaphor, meaning and pedagogical practice. For the artists the connections they depict explain the forces that act upon and within the environment and a knowledge that deepens in complexity as a person progresses through a life-long learning process.

Winsome Jobling’s selected works in Solidarity: Inscriptions for the Future relate to her local study area of 15 years standing: six hectares of bushland on the outskirts of Darwin sitting between National Park and the Darwin Speedway. The terrain shifts from savannah forest, into mangrove and into low wet pandanus swamp. Here the artist researches, collects dyes, earth pigments, plant fibres and re-seeds and regenerates. The works depict sand palm (Livistona humilis) one of the species used for making dilly bags and baskets and age-old cycads that grow under a canopy of Stringy Bark trees (Eucalyptus tetrodonta). Increasingly this “magical place” has become a place to despair as the invasive weed Gamba grass (Andropogen gayanus) extends further, or another fridge or pile of building material is dumped.

Winsome Jobling says: “My work is both a collaboration with the natural world and a haptic response to our impact on it.” (Chatter, exhibition catalogue, BOAA at Ballarat, 2018)

Mulkun Wirrpanda’s relief prints (Rakay no 2 and Rakay no 3) are a selected from works made for the national touring exhibition: ‘Midawarr / Harvest – The Art of Mulkun Wirrpanda and John Wolsley’. Winsome Jobling bravely made the paper for these two prints from Stringy Bark trees used for larrakitj, the hollow coffins created to hold the bones of the dead— sometimes referred to as the mother’s womb—and a longstanding contemporary art form. The process was “challenging”.

Mulkun Wirrpanda says, “Once I started painting food plants without reference to their sacred identity, I had to find a new way to paint. So I had to let the plants tell me what their secular identify or character was.” (Midawarr/Harvest, exhibition catalogue, 2018, p.18)

Djirrirra Wununmurra delves into the artistic and cultural dimensions related to the yam ceremony or Yukuwa — the artist’s moiety and a metaphor for the renewal of the relationships between Yirritja moiety clans of East Arnhem Land (Northern Territory) and their land. The invitation to such a ceremony is presented as an object in the form of a yam with strings emanating from it with feathered flowers at the end: a suggestion of the kinship lines which tie groups together.

Yukuwa is also one of the artist’s personal names and almost a self-portrait: a subject as well as a conceptual tool. In the intense critical discourse of Arnhem Land and the art centre, Djirrirra was challenged by a family member about her right to paint Buyku the fish-trap imagery of her clan and homeland. Rather than argue she asserted her own personal identity and painted the Yukuwa motif, her name. This astonishing riposte dissipated the criticism. That year her new motif won the highly competitive ‘Best Bark’ at the 2012 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award held at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.

The Yukuwa paintings are rarely distracted by colour: they are often dramatically incised into the bark surface and painted over a light ground creating an ethereal quality or she dramatically paints white on black. Djirrirra’s monochrome invitations challenge attitudes to both traditional and contemporary approaches to ‘mark making’.

Djirrirra Wununmurra continues to paint Buyku the fishtrap in the restrained geometric style derived from the traditional form. In the simple geometry of the grid artists of the twentieth century discovered a stable ideal, whose uniform proportions suited the pragmatic structure of modernity. For this reason her precise work is often placed alongside urban minimalist or geometric artists.

Online Exhibition Catalogue – Digital Catalogue, Solidarity: Inscriptions for the Future, 2019. (PDF)

Images: [left] Winsome Jobling, Resilience, 2018. 124 x 52. Handmade papers; Gamba Grass, Spear Grass and Abaca with drypoint and stitching [middle] Winsome Jobling, Guardian, 2018. 119 x 42. Handmade papers; Gamba Grass and Abac with watermarks, drypoint, chin colle and stitching. [right] Winsome Jobling, Custodian, 2018. 120 x 60. Handmade paper; Spear Grass, Banyan and Abaca with watermarks, bushfire ash, drypoint, chin colle and stitching

Mulkun Wirrpanda, Rakay, no 3
28.5 x 54.5cm: Paper: Handmade Stringbark by Winsome Jobling. (147-16-8/30)

Images: [1] Djirrirra Wununmurra Yukuwa, Yukuwa, Earth pigments on Stringybark, 172 x 67cm. Cat#: 3654-17 [2] Djirrirra Wununmurra Yukuwa, Yukuwa, Earth pigments on Stringybark, 153 x 77cm. Cat#:1812-18 [3] Djirrirra Wununmurra Yukuwa, Yukuwa, Earth pigments on Stringybark, 150 x 50cm. Cat#: 4699-17 [4] Djirrirra Wununmurra Yukuwa, Yukuwa, Earth pigments on Stringybark, 106 x 42cm. Cat#: 2012-17

Images: [1] Djirrirra Wununmurra Yukuwa, Yukuwa, Earth pigments on Stringybark, 81 x 35cm. Cat#: 4307-17 [2] Djirrirra Wununmurra Yukuwa, Yukuwa, Earth pigments on Stringybark, 56 x 117cm. Cat#: 4798-17 [3] Djirrirra Wununmurra Yukuwa, Yukuwa, Earth pigments on Stringybark, 150 x 150cm. Cat#: 4699-17 [4] Djirrirra Wununmurra Yukuwa, Yukuwa (Djirrirra), Earth pigments on Stringybark, 117 x 31.5cm. Cat#: 675-17

Solidarity: Inscriptions for the Future at The Cross Art Projects. Image: Silversalt.

Djirrirra Wununmurra at The Cross Art Projects, 2019, installation view. Photo: Silversalt

Djirrirra Wununmurra at The Cross Art Projects, 2019, installation view. Photo: Silversalt

Mulkun Wirrpanda: Rakay no 2, 2018, etching on handmade stringy bark paper by Winsome Jobling, 28.5 x 54.5 cm (left). Dharrangi, 2007, ochres on stringy bark, 146 x 61cm (middle). Rakay no 3, 2018, eching on handmade stringy bark paper by Winsome Jobling, 28.5 x 54.5 cm (right). Image: Silversalt

Djirrirra Wununmurra: (detail) Yukuwa, 2017, natural ochres on stringybark (Larrakitj), 177 x 47 cm (right). Image: Silversalt