Lot 66: - YIRAWALA , CIRCA 1903-1976 WUBARR CEREMONY Natural earth pigments on eucalyptus bark

Natural earth pigments on eucalyptus bark

78.5 by 26.5 cm

Painted at Minjilang, Croker Island, Western Arnhem Land
Jerome Gould, Los Angeles
Private collection

A Private Collection of Aboriginal and Oceanic Art, formally in the collection of Jerome Gould, Los Angeles

Lots 66 - 91

'What distinguishes this so-called primitive art is the motivation of the artist,' the late Jerome Gould once wrote about his collection. 'Aboriginal art is derived from religious beliefs, and the emotional content of these works is very high. This helps to account for their ability to touch the viewer'

Jerome Gould (1922-1993) was a Los Angeles based graphic designer and businessman who first travelled to Australia in 1969. Gould's trained eye was captivated by the bark paintings and sculptures by Arnhem Land artists and he commenced a collection of Aboriginal, Oceanic and American Indian art, which grew to over 500 works, including some 300 bark paintings. Up to the early 1980s, Gould travelled to Australia regularly and acquired works from several northern Aboriginal communities and dealers and galleries throught the nation, to put together one of the most important collections of such work in private hands. In 1986 Gould offered over 200 bark paintings from his collection to the Arnott's Biscuit company in Australia, for whom he had been designing packaging. Arnott's acquired the collection, and when the control of the company changed hands in 1993, the United Nations' Year of the World's Indigenous People, Arnott's made a gift of the collection to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, where they were exhibited under the title They are Meditating: Bark paintings from the MCA's Arnott's Collection earlier this year

The following lots 63 - 91 represent many of he finest and most significant Aboriginal and Oceanic works that where formerly in Gould's collection

Cf. For related paintings by the artist see Ubar ceremony, Ubar ceremony: Drum and Wallaby dance, and Ubar ceremony: Drum and Wallaby dance, painted in the early 1970s, in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, in Holmes, S. Le Brun, Yirawala: Painter of the Dreaming, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1994, pl.124-6, illus.

Yirawala depicts the enactment of the Wubarr, a major regional ceremony of the Kunwinjku people of Western Arnhem Land. The ancestral leader of the ceremony is Nadulmi, the Kangaroo, who is often painted by Yirawala wearing a circle of dots as body paint. The design appears at the centre of the roundels in this painting. The torsos of the participants are covered in dots and they wear ritual feather decorations in their hair.