Title

Kubarkku, Mick.

Author

Australian Art Print Network.

Source

[Not applicable]

Publication date

2001

Type

Biography

Language

English

Country of context

Australia

Full text

Mick Kubarkku

Mick Kubarkku has spent his life on small outstations close to waterholes and billabongs, moving camp seasonally to hunt. In recent years he has settled at Kubumi, a community in northern Arnhem Land. Kubarkku has painted for most of his adult life, initially learning from his father, Ngindjalakku, to make paintings for sacred ceremonies and later selling his works through the government settlement of Maningrida.

He has a rugged and individual painting style that has changed very little in over twenty years. As an artist he chooses not to adorn his figures with meticulous geometric rarrk, the crosshatching painting technique common throughout Arnhem Land, but prefers a barer, uneven form of crosshatching similar to rock markings found in the country near Kubumi where he lives. Large, uneven dots are often applied to the heads, hands and feet of the artist’s figures as well as the internal division which suggests the backbone. Kubarkku’s crosshatching comprises horizontal, vertical or sloping bands of red ochre, relieved by patches of black dots on white. His Mimi figures are shown as substantial spirits emerging from the rock country. His more recent astronomical paintings are in accord with Kunwinjku iconic conventions.

He is one of the few men who remember the old artists of the caves and can give detailed interpretations of the figures and content of the cave paintings. His subject matter and stories are a direct continuation of the cave-art tradition, although his style of image-making is distinctive, particularly the rendition of his figures and crosshatching. His work has a raw, rough, and direct quality, in which the use of white dotted areas on black is a stylistic marker. His cross-hatching is open and unlabored.

Kubarkku is recognised as being one of the great living Kunwinjku artists.

Biography courtesy of the Australian Art Print Network, 2001.

© Australianprints