Title

Malangi, David.

Author

The Australian Print Network.

Source

[Not applicable]

Publication date

2001

Type

Biography

Language

English

Country of context

Australia

Full text

David Malangi

David Malangi was born in 1927 and for most of his life he lived with his extended family at Yathalamara in the Northern Territory. He was the head of the Manarrngu clan and one of the most powerful elders of central Arnhem Land. With the death of clan leaders who owned adjacent lands, Malangi inherited custodianship for vast tracts of land on either side of the Goyder River, thus inheriting the associated responsibilities for caring for sacred sites, recounting the journeys of both the Djankawau creation ancestors and of the ancestor Gunmirringu.

He began painting as a young boy, taught by his father and uncle to paint on bodies for ceremonies, on hollow logs for burials and later on stringybark. He was taught to paint the story of his creation ancestor, Gurrumurringu, and the story of the Djangkawu sisters. He painted the stories that they sang in their ceremonies and his totems the sea eagle, crow, snake and goanna.

Malangi recalled:“I saw my father paint dead men’s (bodies) when I was a little boy and I copied.”

In 1966, when Australia adopted decimal currency, the central motif of the original dollar note was a direct representation of the Gunmirringu story from one of Malangi’s bark paintings. The artist knew nothing of this until he saw the note. The Reserve Bank later recognized his copyright and awarded him compensation and so began the recognition of Aboriginal art copyright.

Malangi was a prolific and highly individualistic Aboriginal artist whose bark paintings and fine art prints has been sought after by major international collectors since the 1960s. In style, his bold collection of individual imagery and shapes on a clear, red ochre or sometimes black background influenced several other central Arnhem Land painters.

He usually composed his paintings and prints around vertical lines rather than a central circular image as favoured by most central Arnhem Land painters, and used broader, bolder brush marks.

His strong, graphic art works, often thickly outlined in white, return to particular themes, always in differing formations with a high figurative content.

His bark paintings and limited edition prints are in collections in Australia and abroad, and took him to Australia’s state capitals, New York and Tahiti.

Malangi was one of the artists who participated in a series of workshops in Ramingining, held by printmaker Theo Tremblay, during which they produced an important series of limited edition prints, the ‘Raminging Print Suite’, based on the Wagilag Sisters creation story. This workshop represents a unique collaboration by a group of celebrated Aboriginal artists.

In 1996 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Law by the Australian National University for his “distinguished creative contribution in the service of society”. He was artist-in-residence at Flinders University (1982) and Sydney University (1983) and in 1988 was invited to the opening of the Dreamings exhibition at the Asia Society Galleries in New York. He died in 1999.

Biography courtesy of The Australian Print Network, 2001.

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