BIDDY LONG NUNGURRAYI - SUGAR BAG
BIDDY LONG NUNGURRAYI
SUGAR BAG, 2012
23 x 30.5 cm
synthetic polymer paint on canvas board
REGION
Lajamanu, NT
PROVENANCE
Warnayaka Artists, N.T
STORY
In Indigenous Australian parlance, the term ‘sugar bags’ is used to describe the sweet honey made by one of around 14 species of native stinginess bees found across Australia. For thousands of years, sugar bags have adorned the faces of rock-art sites in the Kimberley, Arnhem Land and the Central Desert. In the paintings of artists as diverse as Bardayal ‘Lofty’ Nadjamerrek, Jack Britten, Barney Ellaga, Jimmy Wululu and Lucy Ward, it has provided both a source of sweet inspiration and potent formal potential.
In most instances, the sugar bag is a symbol of tripartite significance. On the one hand it refers directly to the bush honey collected from the hollows of trees or crevices of rock shelters. On a more abstract level, the sugar bag usually refers to a particular Dreaming associated with a specific place. Lastly, the painting of sugar bags is often used to assert a totemic or ancestral connection to that particular place. In this sense, therefore, it is a visual metaphor of physical, personal and spiritual dimensions.
EXHIBITED
Songlines Cooee Art Leven Christmas 2012, Cooee Art Leven Gallery, NSW Sydney December 2012
ARTIST PROFILE
