Banaitja

Birrikitji Gumana was a respected community and cultural leader who became a noted painter of barks. He was one of the painters of the collaborative 1963 Yirrkala Church Panels, a landmark assertion of Yolŋu religious beliefs and land sovereignty. His sculpture Banaitja, originally collected by Charles Mountford, was the first recorded sculpture by an Aboriginal artist to enter the Gallery’s collection.

Banaitja expresses traditional Yolŋu belief through a sculptural medium. It has been speculated that Yolŋu men had acquired an interest in figurative woodcarving from Makassan fishermen, who, for more than a century, until about 1900, had visited Arnhem Land each year to collect trepang (sea cucumber) – Australia’s first known international trade. The figure represents Banaitja, an ancestral figure who gave each Yolŋu clan a specific design (miny’tji), used in body painting and bark painting. Here Banaitja is adorned with the geometric miny’tji from clans of the Yirritja moiety, including the artist’s Dhalwangu clan.

Barry Patton, Tarnanthi Writer & Researcher