Bark Painting

Bark painting in Arnhem Land is one of the most dynamic contemporary art movements in Australia. Artists paint their stories on lengths of fibrous bark harvested from the trunks of eucalyptus trees (Eucalpytus tetradonta). Groote Eylandt, in Anindilyakwa Country off the coast of northeast Arnhem Land, has been a center of bark painting since the 1920s. The heavy black background and dashed lines of red, white and yellow ochres that comprise this painting are characteristic of Anindilyakwa bark paintings from the middle of the twentieth century. The black pigment that forms the background of the bark comes from the manganese that has been mined on Groote Eylandt for decades. Following the Second World War, Anindilyakwa artists extended their resourcefulness by extracting black pigment from the carbon in batteries that had been left on the island by Australian and American soldiers.

The well-balanced composition of this painting features the bodies of a snake and crocodile tracking upwards towards a large-limbed bird, likely an emu or cassowary, who fills the entire width of the bark. The body of each is outlined; the interior then divided into sections and infilled with fine, crosshatched lines in yellow, white and black to create a vivid, highly textured and dynamic surface. The artist showcases a wealth of detail: a flourish of feathers cascading down the bird’s back; the scaly, supple skin of the snake whose flickering tongue can perhaps just be glimpsed under the bird’s tail; the spiny tail and splayed feet of the crocodile, gripping the ground as its snout meets the neck of the bird. These may be animals with totemic or ancestral associations significant to the artist, or brought together in the painting tor the re-telling of a local story, one that may hint at prohibition or warning; or the painting may be more secular and figurative in design, a manual guide intended to map the habits of local species and their interactions.

The painting was likely produced in the 1940s or 1950s at the Groote Eylandt Mission or the camp at Umbakumba, which by that period had become an enclave for artists and the center of the commercial bark painting industry. The first missionaries on the island encouraged artists to produce portable barks that could be sold to provide income for the Mission. Artists began transferring the painted designs that previously decorated human bodies, rock shelters and the inner walls of bark huts onto bark panels. Designs associated with secret or sacred knowledge remained restricted to certain artists and ceremonies. By the middle of the twentieth century, when the current work was produced, Anindilyakwa paintings were becoming internationally recognized and represented in Australian galleries and private collections overseas.