Lot 25: THOMAS NANJIWARRA AMAGULA 1924-1989 WHAT HAPPENS TO A MAN AFTER HE DIES ON GROOTE EYLANDT

28.6 BY 36.8 CM, 27.9 BY 34.3 CM, 27.3 BY 33.7 CM, 27.9 BY 33 CM, 28.6 BY 34.3 CM, 27.3 BY 33 CM, 27.9 BY 35.6 CM, 25.4 BY 35.6 CM (4), 27.9 BY 33 CM, 29.2 BY 33 CM, 26.7 BY 35.6 CM, 30.5 BY 33 CM, 31.1 BY 33.7 CM, 27.9 BY 35.6 CM (17 items in this lot).

natural earth pigments on eucalyptus bark

Painted on Groote Eylandt in 1957
Collection of William McE. Miller, Jr, USA

Cf. See Bill Namiayangwa, Battle between west coast and east coast tribesmen, c.1955, (a series of five paintings) in Wally Caruana, Australian Aboriginal Art: A souvenir book of Aboriginal art in the Australian National Gallery, Canberra: Australian National Gallery, 1987, pp.34-5, and in Wally Caruana, (ed.), Windows on the Dreaming: Aboriginal Paintings in the Australian National Gallery, Canberra: Australian National Gallery, and Sydney: Ellsyd Press, 1989, p.134, plate 78; and An attack by war canoes, c.1955, (a series of seven paintings) by the same artist in P. Green, (ed.), Building the Collection, Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2003, p.196, as well as single image from the latter series in W. Caruana, Aboriginal Art, World of Art Series, London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 2003, p.78, plate 61 (illus.).

The painting styles on Groote Eylandt are markedly distinct from those practiced on the mainland, although there are cultural connections and stylistic affinities between western Anindilyakwa people and the Nunggubuyu and Yolngu in Arnhem Land. The archipelago of Groote Eylandt is renowned for its several rock painting sites where the imagery relates directly to that found on sheets of bark. The most distinctive characteristic of Groote Eylandt painting is the predominance of the use of black, usually as a ground colour: the colour is obtained from manganese on Groote which has some of the world's largest deposits of the mineral. The graphic styles of Groote Eylandt bark paintings favour figurative elements set against a monochromatic ground where the elements are described in areas of dots, dashes and hatching.

The first collections of bark paintings from Groote Eylandt were made by anthropologists: Norman Tindale assembled the first collection in 1921-22 (now in the collection of the South Australian Museum) at the time the Anglican Church Missionwas established at Emerald River on the western coast of the island, before it moved north to Angurugu in 1943; Tindale was followed by Frederick Rose from 1938, with the assistance of a white resident of the island and later superintendent of the Umbakumba settlement, Fred Gray; at Rose's suggestion, the University of Melbourne, through Leonhard Adam, acquired a collection between 1946 and 1950 (now part of the Leonhard Adam Collection of International Indigenous Culture); C.P. Mountford followed in 1948 on the American Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land, and Helen Groger-Wurm in 1969.

In the 1950s, the Rev. L.M. Howell, who had been based at the mission at Angurugu, commissioned eight sets of narrative paintings from Thomas Nanjiwarra and Bill Namiayangwa (1923-68). These became the National Gallery of Australia's first major acquisition of Aboriginal art in 1972: comprising four sets of paintings by each artist, seven of which depict narratives in sequential frames as is the case in this group of paintings.

These paintings are sold with the original exhibition documentation, outlining seventeen stages after death on Groote Eylandt:
1. When a person is sick a bamboo (didjeridoo) is played all day and night to make him feel lazy so that he doesn't worry about dying.
2. When the man dies the player goes on to a rock [Brolga (North East) Island, Spirit Island] and looks in the direction from where this dead man comes from.
3. The man points in this direction when he sees the dead man's spirit coming up.
4. The man comes down to have another good look and to make sure.
5. He is sure when he sees a fish swimming, pulling the dead man's spirit to him.
6. He rushes with his hook spear to the rock again to get ready to spear the spirit.
7. The man spears the spirit and puts the spirit on the brown ants' nests, (meat ants), called locally yuwebia.
8.The ants make him strong - he wakes up.
9. Hestands in the middle of the roads - the two side ones are Wallaby and Dingo tracks, the middle one is were humans go, so he goes there.
10. Along the road he found two old women grinding Burrawong (palm nuts).
11. They gave him something to eat and warned him of dangers.
12. A frill-necked lizard saw the spirit coming and got his spear ready.
13. This dragonfly (bi-plane) when he saw the fighting said, "Don't kill my friend" and saved the spirit's life. The dragonfly kills the lizard.
14. The dragonfly and the spirit travel to this tree. The spirit said, "Wait - If I climb halfway up the tree I will come back; if I climb all the way I will go on forever" (To come back he would be born again to his same old mother).
15. All his relations who have predeceased him see him coming and wait for him.
16. The spirit was taken in before the others and he tells them what is going on on the earth.
17. He tells all this to the snake who tells him to go to the big pool. (To be sent to the small one would mean he would be coming back to earth again).