Garnkiny Ngarrangkarni - Moon Dreaming

Mabel Juli, a senior custodian of law and culture of her Gija people, was born in 1933 in the Kimberley region of Western Australia and began painting in the 1980s. Her painting Garnkiny Ngarrangkarni – Moon Dreaming reprises one of her frequent subjects, the moon. In this work, she paints a white moon wedged between a star and a yellow mountain and set against the deep black sky.

These minimal forms, inspired by Juli’s Country at Yariny, south of Warmun, tell the story of Garnkiny (the moon), a man who fell in love with Daawul, a beautiful girl with black hair. A union between them was forbidden, as Daawul, the black-headed snake, was Garnkiny’s classificatory mother-in-law. Subsequently banished by the Elders, he curses those who would not allow him to marry Daawul, asserting that they will all die, while he, as the moon, with its cyclical returns, will live forever. The artist has applied up to six coats of charcoal on the painting, endowing the surface of the work with a beautiful richness and depth.