Title

Manikay (Song Cycle): Jack Wunuwun and John Bulun Bulun

Venues

UTS Gallery (15 May 2003 – 13 June 2003)

Date

(2003)

Summary

Multi-artist exhibition. Located: Australia (NSW). Paintings

Country of context

Australia

Abstract

Manikay is an exhibition of works painted in natural ochres on canvas and bark by brothers-in-law, Jack Wunuwun and John Bulun Bulun.  Manikay in eastern Arnhem Land languages, means ‘song cycle’ and refers to the ceremonial songs and dances through which Yolngu people celebrate their creation stories.

Before his death in 1990, Jack Wunuwun was an important artist with an international reputation, as well as being the practical and spiritual leader of his people, the Gang-ngal clan of the Murrungum/Djinang language group.  The Murrungun are custodians of the elaborate Barnumbirr (Morning Star) ceremony, a ritual of cultural exchange and diplomacy conducted annually in which they celebrate the creation of their world through song, dance and the making of sacred objects and acknowledge important themes such as the cycles of nature, birth, death and regeneration.  Wunuwun’s large canvas describes the full narrative of the activities of spirit beings who travelled across the land and seas to create geographical features and introduce the language and laws by which Yolngu people could live in harmony.

Wunuwun’s art-making was inextricably tied to his desire to communicate and educate at the highest level and as widely as possible.  The Barnumbirr Manikay series, in which Wunuwun recorded on thirty small barks the individual songs of the cycle, grew out of this ideal.  Originally they were quickly sketched to teach his grandchildren, eventually evolving into art works of great elegance and clarity.

The Yolngu experience their world as being divided into two moieties, dhuwa and yirritja, everything being classified as belonging to one or the other.  Places, seasons, winds, flora and fauna exist in complementary relationships and people are bound by laws which determine the complex web of their social and ceremonial interactions, including who they can marry. The faces in the bottom left of the Wunuwn canvas represent dhuwa and yirritja moities.  The strings which appear on either side of the faces describe the relationships between them. Jack Wunuwun and the Barnumbirr Manikay are of the Dhuwa moiety, whereas John Bulun Bulun and the Murrukundjeh ritual are yirritja.

Contemporary artist John Bulun Bulun is a respected traditional doctor, songman and senior ceremonial manager.  His paintings describe the annual visits over more than three hundred years (until 1906) of Macassan traders to Arnhem Land shores to collect and process trepang (beche de mer) which they traded with the Chinese.  The large canvas includes the most important abstract and figurative elements of the Ganalbingu language group creation myth and also contains references to the social and cultural influences absorbed through interaction with Macassan people. Abstract designs on individual barks comment on the path of the Macassar perahus journeying to and from ‘Marege’, the name they gave to the land lying to the south of their country.  The North West wind that carried them is represented by a triangular pattern which is also painted on the bodies of dancers performing in the Murrukundjeh ceremony. Songs and accompanying dances describe some of the goods which were introduced such as tools, dugout canoes and their sails, knives cloth and tobacco.

(1) In 1993 Bulun Bulun led a group including dancers, songman and didgeridoo player to perform Marayarr Murrukunddjeh over three nights at the Galigo Museum in Makassar (Ujung Pandang), Sulawesi.  The visit, to re-establish relations with descendants of the Makassans, was a moving time for the Ganalbingu.  Bulun Bulun had long dreamed of this land so intimately connected with his people’s past.

Elaborate preparations for the ceremony included body painting and decorations and making the Marayarr pole to represent the mast and rigging of a Makassar ship.  By painting the pole and making the feathered ropes and singing, this pole, handed down through the decades from father to son, had enabled elders to pass on the lore.  On the last night of the ceremony, the dancers slowly appeared out of the shadows to reveal their final gift.  People mourned the loss of the pole as it was presented, a traditional ritual which reflected the Ganalbingu’s sadness at parting with their Makassan friends and family. [gallery media]

(1) Garuda (In-flight Magazine), Rosalinda Corazon, September 1997, p. 45