Male figure

Like most Tiwi men, Declan Apuatimi began to carve in his youth as he learnt to shape and decorate traditional burial poles, known as turtini. He eventually became the best known carver on Bathurst Island, typically crafting human figures from tough ironbark, but he was also proficient in such diverse media as bark painting and weaving fine armbands.

Apuatimi carved Male figure in the early 1970s, at a time when his artistic career was beginning to flourish. The work demonstrates a powerful sturdiness in its minimal form, balanced by a lightness and liveliness of decoration, achieved by means of painted ochres and black cockatoo feathers. For this decoration, Apuatimi drew on a Tiwi creation story about human mortality, involving the ancestor figure Purukuparli, who began the pukumani burial ceremony: the ochre dots and cross hatching allude to those on turtini, and the black feathers suggest the head decorations worn at burial ceremonies.

Barry Patton, Tarnanthi Writer & Researcher