4954A, 2016, Galuma Maymuru
Lorrkon, 210cm
Provenance: Hanging Valley Gallery, Melbourne.
Galuma Maymuru uses art as a memory to pass Manggalili law to new generations of her country as well as to explore her homeland, something that was shared with her by her father, artist Narritjin Maymuru. ‘He’d say “this is our painting and I’m telling you about the paintings for in the future when I am passed away you can use them”’. One of the first Yolngu women to become significant artists, she learnt by watching him and replicating his techniques. Many of Galuma’s finest paintings and carvings emphasise the transformational nature of the spiritual world, with figures appearing from and disappearing into a background pattern of Manggalili clan designs that represent the moving surface of the rivers, sand and sea (1).
The Lorrkon or bone pole coffin ceremony was the final ceremony in a sequence of mortuary rituals celebrated by the people of Arnhem Land. This ceremony involves the placing of the deceased’s bones into a hollow log, which is decorated with painted clan designs and ceremonially placed into the ground where it remained until it slowly decay over many years. The log is made from a termite hollowed stringybark tree (Eucalyptus tetradonta) and is decorated with totemic emblems.