Garidji

Narritjin Maymuru described himself as an ‘artistfella’, although his artist’s brush in Arnhem Land also rendered bold, masterly strokes in national politics. In 1963, Maymuru, a Yolŋu clan leader, initiated and collaborated in the painting of the landmark Yirrkala Church Panels, and later that year he was one of the painters of the celebrated Yirrkala Bark Petition to federal parliament – both of them artistic declarations of Yolŋu sovereignty, in culture and land.

Also in 1963, Maymuru’s brush meticulously applied ochres to a large sheet of bark stripped from a eucalyptus trunk as he painted Garidji. It depicts part of an ancestral creation story, in which a crocodile and stingray, rivals hunting outside Caledon Bay in the Gulf of Carpentaria, are transformed by a whale into a sandy island and a rock. The bottom panel shows turtles feeding on box jellyfish while fish feed on the turtles’ scraps. The painting implicitly asserts Yolŋu rights to saltwater country from time immemorial.

Barry Patton, Tarnanthi Writer & Researcher