Deutscher and Hackett

Noŋgirrŋa Marawili’s Yathikpa, 2013 abounds with the energy of her Madarrpa clan coastal lands, an interconnected network of diamond shapes painted in ochre and charcoal, expand and contract across the bark. In recording adjacent sites of Yathikpa and Baratjala, located on Blue Mud Bay, Marawili asserts the secular nature of her painting, ‘I paint water designs – the water as it splashes onto the rocks at high tide…. the painting that I do is not sacred… The paintings I do are from the outside, Water, Rock, Rocks which stand strong and the waves which run and crash upon the rock, the Sea spray. This is the painting I do, but I know the sacred designs.’¹

Marawili began painting in the 1990s as an assistant to her husband, Djutjadjutja Munuŋgurr, adding cross-hatching and in-fill according to his instructions, and over the next decade she would collaborate with him following established Yolŋu bark painting conventions. Marawili didn't begin to emerge in her own right until 2005 when she became a regular painter at Buku-Larrŋgay, but her most original works appeared from 2011 when she began to paint interpretations of her paternal lands. Her current work refers back to these areas, remembering ancient ways of living directly on country she grew up on as a child. 

Marawili’s work has been the recipient of a number of awards, winning the NAATSIA Best Bark award in 2015 and again in 2019, and she has been the subject of a major solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2018. Her paintings were also included in major group exhibitions, such as Tarnathi, Art Gallery of South Australia (2019); NIRIN, Biennale of Sydney (2020); Know My Name: Australian Women Artists from 1900 to Now, National Gallery of Australia (2020 – 2021); and Bark Ladies, National Gallery of Victoria (2021 – 2022).  

1. Pinchbeck, C. (ed.), Noŋgirrŋa Marawili. From My Heart and Mind, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2018, p. 21

CRISPIN GUTTERIDGE