GEORGE MILPURRURRU - MAGPIE GEESE

 GEORGE MILPURRURRU
MAGPIE GEESE,  0.199
156 x 64 cm
natural earth pigments on bark
 
PROVENANCE
Arnhem Land, NT
Private Collection Lawson Menzies AuctionCoo-ee Aboriginal Art GalleryAccompanied by a first person biography 
 
STORY
George Milpurrurru was raised in his fatherā€™s country Ngalyindi, the Ganalbingu outstation, which straddles a ridge to the east side of the Arafura swamp. The swamp, in the middle section of the Glyde River, is home to flocks of water birds, fresh water plants, snakes, and a rich array of other flora and fauna. This Eden became the wellspring from which Milpurrurruā€™s drew his artistic inspiration. He began to paint under the guidance of his father, Nhulmarmar and, as Judith Ryan observed, 'Nhulmarmarā€™s art prefigures that of his son, Milpurrurru, in its capricious reversals of tone and patterning and its graphic power'. Indeed, Milpurrurruā€™s mastery over the play between foreground and background characterizes his paintings in which blocks of flat colour and intricate rarrk cross-hatching create a strong graphic effect. His style traversed stylistic conventions across Arnhem Land and sythesised these in to highly designed compositions. In doing so he drew on the aesthetic traditions of Western Arnhem Land artists, who applied cross-hatching solely within the figurative or schematic motifs of the work, while at the same time borrowing on the Eastern Arnhem Land convention of leaving figures unadorned, depicted in black against a heavily patterned background. Yet even in this variation, Milpurrurru stood outside Eastern Arnhem Land conventions in preferring to create complex arrangements of intersecting patterns.
 
EXHIBITED
Bark Paintings 1930-2000, July 2011, Coo-ee Art Gallery