JOHN MAWURNDJUL

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Published 2015 by Annandale Galleries 500 copies Copyright John Mawrndjul, John Bulunbulun & Annandale Galleries

ISBN 978-0-992 4640-2-8

Design by Anne & Bill Gregory Production by Ana Lopez Catalogue photography by Murray Fredericks Landscape photography by Jon Altman & Apolline Kohen Photos P22, 36 & 40 by Bill Gregory All barks & poles natural earth pigments, & pva fixative Printed by Sydney’s Print & Promotion Solutions

Front cover: John Mawurndjul Ngalyod (Rainbow Serpent - detail) 2012 185 x 71 cm JMA94 Fronticepiece: John Mawurndjul Milmilngkan (detail) 2009 155.5 x 91 cm JMA65 Back cover: John Bulunbulun Body Design (detail) 2009 125 x 83 cm M849 JOHN MAWURNDJUL

JOHN BULUNBULUN

Rarrk Masters

Exhibition dates 14 April - 23 May 2015

Exhibition curated by Apolline Kohen

ANNANDALE GALLERIES

110 Trafalgar Street Annandale Sydney NSW 2038 Australia Telephone (61-2) 9552 1699 Fax (61-2) 9566 4424 [email protected] www.annandalegalleries.com.au Gallery Hours Tuesday - Saturday 11:00 - 5:00 pm Directors Anne & Bill Gregory INTRODUCTION

I left Maningrida in 2008 after six years as the Arts Director of Maningrida Arts & Culture. In July 2014 I came back to Maningrida for a short holiday. On the way, I was both excited and nervous about reconnecting with old friends and the many artists I had worked with. When our car reached the Mumeka river crossing, I felt I had never really left. Everything looked, felt, even smelled so familiar… A group of Djelk rangers were having lunch at the crossing, and when they saw me they immediately told me that Balang (John Mawurndjul) was at side camp in Maningrida. Obviously, they thought I was coming to see Balang. It was true. I had missed him.

So, we went straight to side camp. And, yes, Balang was sitting outside the ‘yellow house’ with his wife Kay and a couple of his grandchildren. A very familiar scene, except that something was missing: no painting paraphernalia was in sight. I knew Balang had not been painting for a while, which I had found sad but not surprising. Kay and Balang greeted me with a hug and we sat down for a chat and a cup of tea. Quickly, our conversation turned to art and memories of the numerous exhibitions and trips we had made together. We laughed and felt nostalgic.

The next day, I went to the arts centre and noticed a number of paintings by Balang in the storerooms…. They sat, as if abandoned, among a massive stock of artworks. A handful of magnificent paintings by Bangardi (John Bulunbulun) also caught my attention. They were obviously not recent as Bangardi sadly passed away in 2010. I actually recognised a couple of paintings I had put aside for an exhibition back in 2008. I immediately felt the urge to put an exhibition together.

In my days the relationship between Balang and Bangardi was one of great respect. There was also a bit of rivalry between the two artists as both had been celebrated by the art world and had received many awards. Who was ‘number one’ was a regular question they asked me. Thankfully, their artistic style was almost diametrically opposed. One had gone for innovation and breaking boundaries, the other had cherished mastering the traditional way of depicting his country and important stories. This meant I could easily answer that Bangardi was the master of old style and Balang the master of innovation. Both men seemed satisfied with my answer. Balang’s paintings were commanding much higher prices than any other artists in Maningrida. However, Bangardi was a true gentleman and never emphasised the issue with me. He knew it was not my fault. It was the crude market reality of the 2000s: buyers preferred the innovator. But, he also knew that in the long run, he would not be forgotten and that his work would continue to hang in museums across the world. He was quietly confident about his art. And so was Balang.

To me, in 2014, it just made sense to try to put an exhibition together that would celebrate their talent. I suppose it was my way to pay a personal and professional tribute to two exceptional men I had the privilege to work with for some years. I spoke to Balang about my idea of a show. I knew Balang would understand why I wanted to include Bangardi’s work in the exhibition. Indeed, he welcomed the idea. I suggested Annandale Galleries as the venue. It was a natural choice: both artists had exhibited with Annandale in the past; both artists liked Bill and Anne; both artists regarded Annandale Galleries as a ‘number one’ gallery. And from my perspective, if anyone could reignite Balang’s career and pay tribute to Bangardi’s work adequately, it was Annandale Galleries. 4 Balang and I did the initial selection of works together, just like in the old days. Balang was again the professional artist at work: focused, passionate, critical and committed. I then approached the Arts Director, Lucy Bond, at the arts centre and called Bill. They both welcomed the idea and worked out the details. My work was done. Well, not quite….I would like to see Balang painting again. Maybe this exhibition will encourage him to resume painting. I just know that the artistic fire in him is not dead. It is just dormant. In 2001, Mawurndjul said to me in an interview for a catalogue essay ‘my head is full up with ideas’. I believe it is still the case.

Apolline Kohen 25 March 2015

Apolline Kohen with her daughter and John Mawurndjul and grandson 2014 5 To rarrk or not to rarrk, that is the question

Jon Altman, Emeritus professor in Anthropology, The Australian National University.

To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?

I never thought I would be quoting William Shakespeare Act 3, Scene 1 as a provocation for considering the artistic fortunes of my old friend John Mawurndjul who I generally call by his subsection name Balang. Rarrk describes the tight cross-hatching design that is ubiquitous to the painting style of the people of much of Arnhem Land, and I have taken the liberty here of turning rarrk the noun into a verb. More correctly I should refer to -rarrkbimbun ‘to paint rarrk’, invariably with naturally-occurring ochres and pigments often sourced from important sacred or djang places in the sentient Kuninjku landscape; material from sacred places used to paint designs that enact in public form the power that bestows sacredness on these places. Over a long career Balang has refined a delicate and shimmering rarrk, his hallmark, reflecting the dexterity and creative genius that have made him the foremost bark painter of the last two decades. Since I first met Balang he has always been an artist. In 1979 and 1980 I lived with him at Mumeka outstation on his Kurulk clan lands when he was a young aspiring artist, hunter, ceremony and family man and I was a young doctoral student. We hunted together, walked everywhere on his country and went to ceremony together; and I watched him paint, on bark and on bodies. Balang taught me a great deal about the Kuninjku world view and life ways, insights that have had a career-long impact.

From the 1980s Balang decided to focus much energy on painting. By the 1990s he had become Australia’s best known bark painter. In 2003 he won the Clemenger prize, in 2004 he was lead artist at the major retrospective Crossing Country at the Art Gallery of NSW. In 2005 and 2006 he had a major retrospective Rarrk John Mawurndjul at the Museum Tinguely, Basel and Sprengel Museum Hannover; he had important books like Between Indigenous Australia and Europe: John Mawurndjul published about him and his practice. In 2006 he was heavily involved on site at the Musée du Quai Branly commission and in 2009 he won the Melbourne Art Foundation award for Artist of the Year, the first Indigenous artist to do so. I remember vividly giving a biographical celebratory speech in his honour in his presence on that occasion. In 2010 he was awarded an AM ‘For service to the preservation of Indigenous culture as the foremost exponent of the Rarrk visual art style’.

These were the good times; Balang was at his peak, living entirely and comfortably on his arts earnings. In 2010 I wrote a short essay for a solo show at the now defunct Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi in Melbourne. I was amazed and thrilled by Balang’s indefatigable commitment to his arts practice as he approached 60, his extraordinary energy and almost obsessive drive to innovate. I wrote a short essay ‘Still he keeps rarrking, rarrking’. 6 Milmilngkan 2009 156 x 73 cm JMA89 385-09

7 Like many others, including Balang, I was blindsided by his success and could not foresee that his artistic career would go into free fall. Some of this was due to unforeseen factors; the Global Financial Crisis impacted cruelly on the visual arts sector, Indigenous art centre sales nationally declined by over 50 per cent between 2008 and 2011 and Balang was not immune from such global forces.

Other factors compounded this national decline locally. After extraordinarily collaborations with a string of excellent arts advisers, Diane Moon, Andrew Hughes, Fiona Salmon and, most importantly, Apolline Kohen and some top notch commercial galleries, relations with a revolving door of new advisers soured and Balang became disengaged. For a period Maningrida Arts and Culture, the community-based centre representing Balang and its parent organisation the Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation, also went into fiscal free fall. Bad government policy making was a key destroyer. In the aftermath of the Northern Territory Intervention and the GFC, the Community Development Employment Program that provided artists with basic income and Bawinanga with crucial resources to service and support artists and their outstations was systematically demonised and demolished.

In late 2010, I saw Balang in hospital in Darwin unwell and deeply distressed by his rapidly declining career. In 2011, he told me of his deep dissatisfaction with a new arts adviser who was dismissed not long afterwards. In 2012, he was living in what is known as ‘side camp’ in the township of Maningrida, dispirited with no vehicle, the vital means to return to his bush home and art studio at Milmilngkan—three years earlier he owned three trucks in good order. In 2013 when I visited he told me he had given up painting: I watched him aged over 60 going to the Ye’ Ya workshop in Maningrida inquiring about a ‘real job’ as a tyre repairer; the newly-introduced Remote Jobs and Community Program required such job search if one was to avoid being breached and left totally destitute.

At times in recent years our relationship has been strained. We had shared the high times together and now things were looking grim. Balang imagined that I had the power to assist in the repair of his career and to restore the declining fortunes of Maningrida Arts and Culture with whom I had worked closely over many years. I in turn felt deeply frustrated and angry at my inability to make a difference despite my best advocacy efforts in Maningrida and in Canberra. There was a degree of cross-cultural tension about who was responsible for whom and for what.

In the last five years Balang has experienced ‘the slings and arrows’ of outrageous misfortune, he has suffered. But the robust Kuninjku kinship network and moral economy have sustained him: he has taken solace in family, in ceremonial participation, in spiritual leadership, in advising the Djelk rangers on natural and cultural resource and fire management, deploying his intimate knowledge of the Kurulk estate of which he is now the most senior owner and of Kardbam and Darnkolo estates of which he is manager. He has experienced extreme poverty, barely surviving on Newstart Allowance and subject to the demeaning expenditure restrictions associated with the compulsory income management regime of BasicsCard. Despite its intentions, the resale royalty scheme returns him little, too much of his art now selling for record prices on the secondary market was produced before the scheme was introduced in 2010, before the great crash.

8 I sensed a change in Balang when I visited him late in 2014 at Marrkolidjban where a major Kunabibi ceremony, for which he was a boss, was underway. He was less agitated and we did not talk about art. Instead we went off together, two aging hunters, fishing for barramundi in the crocodile-infested Marrkolidjban Creek, just like in the old days but with less success.

Earlier this year I again visited Balang accompanied by the master linguist Murray Garde; we were doing some research on the Kuninjku domestic moral economy. With some trepidation I raised with Balang his willingness to travel again to Sydney to participate in the Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition Luminous featuring some of his paintings. His response was immediate and enthusiastic, as was his focused collaboration in the careful re-documentation of the mythology and meanings of his exhibition works. There had been further changes at Maningrida Arts and Culture, a fine new art centre has been completed and Bawinanga was on sounder financial footings. After a hiatus of several years, Balang announced that he might be ready to paint again. Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?

Mawurndjul rarrking ceremonial pole Quai Branley Museum Paris 2005-2006 9 Milmilngkan 2009 155 x 69 cm JMA98 1501-09

10 Milmilngkan 2009 155.5 x 91 cm JMA65 384-09

11 Dilebang 2010 150 x 60.7 cm JMA78 1602-10

12 Ngalyod (Rainbow Serpent) 2012 185 x 71 cm JMA94 2017-12

13 Milmilngkan 2009 166 x 81 cm JMA90 1630-09

14 Milmilngkan 2010 220.5 x 63 cm JMA96 844-10

15 Milmilngkan 2011 Milmilngkan 2010 16 169 x 43 cm 136 x 36 cm JMA93 3143-11 JMA91 434-10 Birlmu or Namarnkol (Barramundi) 2011 155 x 60 cm JMA97 5997-11

17 Lorrkon (Hollow log) 2008 Lorrkon (Hollow log) 2008 18 210 x 26 cm 179.5 x 19 cm JMA99 4539-08 JMA95 4352-08 Lorrkon (Hollow log) 2009 Lorrkon (Hollow log) 2009 197.5 x 19 cm 186 x 22 cm 19 JMA 101 2182-09 JM92 34-09 Milmingkan 159.5 x 77 cm JMA100

20 SELECTED BIOGRAPHY John Mawurndjul AM (born 1952 Mumeka NT) lives and works Maningrida and Milmilngkan Arnhemland NT

5 EVENTS 1970’s Marries Kay Lindjuwanga – eight children 2003 First Aboriginal artist to win the prestigious Clemenger prize for contemporary art at National Gallery Victoria 2004 Formerly opens Crossing Country at Art Gallery of New South Wales 2005 First Australian artist since Sydney Nolan to have a retrospective at a major overseas museum 2005-6 Musée du quai Branly In Paris – permanent installation column and ceiling

5 MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS 1996 Eye of the Storm National Gallery of Australia Canberra 2001 In the Heart of Arnhem Land: Myth and the making of contemporary Aboriginal art Musée de l’Hotel-Dieu France 2004 Crossing Country Art Gallery of New South Wales Sydney 2005 Solo Retrospective Rarrk – John Mawurndjul – Journey through time in Northern Australia Museum Tinguely Basel Switzerland and Sprengel Museum Hanover 2015 Earth and Sky Mawurndjul and Gulumbu Yunupingu, TarraWarra Museum, VIC

5 SOLO COMMERCIAL GALLERY EXHIBITIONS 1997 Annandale Galleries Sydney (catalogue) 1999 Annandale Galleries Sydney 2002 Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi Melbourne 2004 (catalogue), 2006 (catalogue) 2009, 2015 (catalogue) Annandale Galleries Sydney

5 AWARDS 1988 Rothmans Foundation Award National Aboriginal Art Award MAGN Darwin NT 1999, 2002 Telstra Bark Painting Award NATSIAA MAGNT Darwin NT 2003 Winner of the Clemenger Contemporary Art Prize National Gallery of Victoria 2009 Melbourne Art Fair Foundation Artist of the Year 2010 Awarded AM

5 PUBLICATIONS Murray Garde 1997 Ngalyod in my head: The art of John Mawurndjul John Mawurndjul, John Bulunbulun, Annandale Galleries Sydney Appoline Kohen & John Mawurndjul 2001 My head is full up with ideas: In the heart of Arnhem Land: Myth and contemporary Aboriginal Art Musée de l’Hotel-Dieu France RARRK retrospective catalogue 240 pages Tinguely Museum Basel 2006 Crossing Country catalogue for exhibition curated by Hetti Perkins 2009 Earth and Sky full catalogue 2015

5 COLLECTIONS John Kluge Collection Virginia USA British Museum Kaplan/Levi Collection Seattle Washington USA Quai Branley Museum Paris All State Galleries and National Gallery of Australia 21 John Mawurndjul, Maningrida ca. 2011

22 23 24 JOHN BULUNBULUN John Bulunbulun by Murray Garde Master linguist Australian National University In 1988 I went to live and work in Maningrida in central-north Arnhem Land. Not long after my arrival the senior Kunibídji language traditional owner of Maningirda, Willy Djarrkkarla passed away. His funeral was attended by people from every language group of the region. This was my first contact with Ganalbingu people, including the celebrated songman, sculptor and painter Johnny Bulunbulun, also known as Bangardi, his skin name. At Djarrkkarla’s funeral Ganalbingu people from Ramingining were presenting dances that I found extraordinary. A group of women performed a dance that saw them transformed into the magpie geese or gamung that inhabited the Arafura wetlands in Ganalbingu country, whilst the men were performing dances with knives that had a distinct Asian feel to them. I later learned that indeed these dances were of asian origin. They were extracts from the Ganalbingu and Djarrwitjibi clans’ Marayarr Murrukundja ceremony which celebrates the historical connection that central Arnhem Land people have with the Macassan trepang or sea-cucumber fishermen of Sulawesi in Indonesia.

In the early 1990s Bulunbulun’s art was focused on the these Macassan themes and when I was Cultural Research Officer at Maningrida Arts & Culture in the early 1990s I had the privilege of documenting many of these bark paintings that Bulunbulun brought it for sale. There was a distinct east-west divide in the art of Maningrida. On the eastern side, Burarra, Djinang and Ganalbingu artists produced very different artworks to the western side represented primarily by Kuninjku people from the Mann and Liverpool Rivers. I had been adopted by Kuninjku families when I was working as a school teacher on outstations south and south-west of Maningrida and had became familiar with the Kuninjku paintings of animals, rainbow serpents and spirit beings often depicted as single motifs on plain red ochre backgrounds. When Bulunbulun started working on his Macassan theme paintings, I was startled by the difference. There were abstract geometric patterns reminiscent of those from Indonesian textiles as well as what looked like the bark painting version of still life— images of blocks of tobacco, ceramic containers, and knives on cross-hatched or rarrk backgrounds. I’m glad I encountered Bulunbulun’s art at that early time in my work with Aboriginal artists from Maningrida as it expanded my limited understanding of Aboriginal art and the boundaries that I had constructed around it.

At the time, I was challenged by the prospect of documenting Bulunbulun’s bark paintings of ceramic pots, knives and cross-cultural iconography as well as other seemingly inaccessible representations of sites and totemic subjects. I went to Wurdeja outstation to the east of Maningrida where Bulunbulun was living with his wife Laurie Maburru on her country. Bulunbulun had a great bush studio at Wurdeja where he was working, and at the time he was supported by a full professional fellowship he had received from the Aboriginal Arts Unit of the Australia Council in 1991. He had already painted a set of works on Macassan themes that had been sold to the Holmes à Court Collection but he continued to explore this subject matter as a reaction to the aftermath of the bicentenary of European settlement in Australia. Lost in the folderol of self-congratulatory celebration in 1988 was the historical reality that before Europeans arrived, Aboriginal people from northern Australia had already established a long association over centuries with the Macassan sea cucumber or trepang fishermen from Sulawesi. The Macassans came to the Arnhem Land coast and further afield each wet season to collect the trepang which was then sold on to Chinese merchants. 26 Body Design 2009 113 x 61 cm M847 1114-09

27 The last Macassan visits to north Australia were in the first decade of the twentieth century, brought to an end by racist immigration policies of the Commonwealth Government. The language and culture of the Macassan seafarers however had left indelible marks in Indigenous culture across Australia’s Top End.

Bulunbulun was born some four decades after the last of the annual Macassan visits to Arnhem Land but he became the senior custodian and performer of a diplomacy ceremony that was based on this age-old contact between Indigenous people and the Macassan trepang fishermen. This ceremony, the Marayarr Murrukundja is a variety of the Marrajiri or Rom ceremonies of diplomacy which are conceived as gifts given by one language group to another. Such ceremonial gift giving maintains amity and strengthens social, economic and kinship ties between groups. During the Marayarr Murrukundja, dancers present a long pole of over three metres which has been coiled with string, decorated with feather tassels and coloured with bands of red, yellow and white ochre. The pole and lengths of cloth hanging from the top of the pole represent the sails and mast of a Macassan perahu (‘sailing vessel’). Each evening the dancers bring out the pole but they keep it some distance away in the darkness. On the last evening of the performance the pole is finally brought into full view of the audience and presented to them. Dancers pull on the attached ropes or ‘rigging’ to make the pole sway back and forwards like a Macassan perahu on the open ocean.

One of Bulunbulun’s most important but lesser known contributions as an Australian artist, was in October 1993 when he lead a group of performers to Sulawesi in Indonesia on an official Australian Government sponsored visit to Makassar (Ujung Pandang). Over the course of a week at the old Dutch Fort now converted to the La Galigo Museum, Bulunbulun and his group performed the Marayarr Murrukundja ceremony for the people of Makassar. A group of Macassan dancers and musicians reciprocated with a performance of their own. It was a week of poignant encounters. For the first time Bulunbulun saw the actual objects which had been depicted in Ganalbingu art throughout his life. In antique shops, we saw iconic Macassan ceramic pots, jugs, textiles and other objects, so familiar to Ganalbingu people in the form of artistic representation but here for the first time before them was the tangible reality. We were also shown decorative heirloom Macassan swords and long knives like the ones represented in the dances I had seen in Maningrida. The group also took an excursion to watch beautiful wooden ships being constructed in the southern ship building villages of Ujung Pandang.

In depicting such objects, Bulunbulun’s art goes beyond the aesthetic realm into the domain of historical documentation. Like the rock art images of the Arnhem Land plateau that depict the first contact between Indigenous people and Europeans, Bulunbulun’s Macassan contact works are a rare example of the documentation of history from an Indigenous perspective. It is also evidence of the dynamic and evolving nature of Australian Indigenous art and culture where there is room for incorporation of an alterity that ultimately becomes central to one’s own identity.

28 I am not sure how frequently the Marayarr Murrukundja ceremony is performed today in Arnhem Land but further detailed musicological and cultural documentation would be wise in order to safeguard this nationally significant example of Australian Indigenous heritage.

In January of this year 2015, I returned to Maningrida for a week of catching up with old friends and adopted families. During a visit to Maningrida Arts and Culture I was happy to meet up again with Laurie Maburru. She was seated in a workshop next to an enormous hollow log, raised at one end and decorated with incomplete hatching and motifs. Bulunbulun passed away in 2010 before the completion of the hollow log and now Laurie had decided that she will would bring it to completion by finishing the painting herself. Hollow logs are mortuary objects. Traditionally used as large ossuaries—containers for the deceased— this richly decorated object somehow evoked the presence of Bulunbulun for me. As we spoke softly about the task that lay ahead, I felt that Bangardi was there with us and that somehow his life history had placed itself into that large impressive hollow log. His paintings of landscapes, totemic emblems, animals, plants and objects of Macassan material culture illustrate a profound story about the continuities between people, places and things, and that objects of art in the Ganalbingu world and elsewhere, have agency and a life of their own.

John Bulunbulun & Murray Garde at Perspecta Exhibition, Art Gallery of NSW 1995 29 Body Design 2007 170 x 56 cm M850 1805-07

30 Bakarra 2009 139 x 59 cm M851 30-09

31 Body Design 2007 155 x 73 cm M848 1985-07

32 Body Design 2009 125 x 83 cm M849 1256-09

33 Djilibunyamurr Waterhole 1996 34 110.5 x 86.5 cm M21 Selected Biography

John Bulunbulun (1946 - 2010 )

Region: East Central Arnhem Land Community: Maningrida Moiety: Yirridjdja Subsection: Bangardi

Subject / Theme: Common subjects are Gumang, the magpie goose, and Garjarr, the water snake, amongst water lilies in the swamp country at Djilibunyumurr (see P. Cooke and J. Altman, 1982). The Dreaming figure Yangagai looks after this country. His home is said to be Gutitjwirrka. Other figures associated with these lands are Warnyu, the flying fox, Gunungurr, the black headed python, Barnda, the freshwater tortoise, Dilijidambe, a brown water beetle eaten by the tortoises and Lidgilidgi, finches. These finches and magpie geese are danced by the Ganalbingu people at Marradjiri (ceremony to celebrate the birth of a child), Djapi (initiation) and Murukundjeh (mortuary) ceremonies.

Collections: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, SA Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, WA Artbank, Sydney, NSW Central Collection, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT Charles Darwin University Art Collection Djomi Museum, Maningrida, NT Flinders University Art Museum, Adelaide, SA Kluge Collection, Morven Estate, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA Milingimbi Collection, MECA, Milingimbi Educational and Cultural Association, NT Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin, NT Museum of Contemporary Art, Maningrida Collection, Sydney NSW National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, VIC National Maritime Museum, Darling Harbour, Sydney NSW Parliament House Art Collection, Canberra, ACT Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, QLD The Holmes á Court Collection, Perth, WA The Kelton Foundation, Santa Monica, California, USA

John Bulunbulun had his first solo exhibition ‘Mawurndjul & Bulunbulun’ at Annandale Galleries in 1997 followed by numerous landmark Annandale group shows. Between 1983 and 2008 he participated in over sixty group shows in Australia. Overseas museum shows include Japan, USA, Germany, Netherlands, France, Spain, Bahrain and the UK. Bulunbulun was the senior ceremonial elder of his tribe and language group as well as the most influential artist until his passing in 2010. In 2004 he was awarded the prestigious ‘Red Ochre’ award by the Australia Council. The Red Ochre Award pays tribute to an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander artist who throughout their lifetime has made outstanding contributions to the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts, both nationally and internationally. 35 John Bulunbulun, Annandale Galleries 2004

36 37 38 39 Posters Tinguely Museum, Basel Switzerland 2005

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JOHN BULUNBULUN

ANNANDALE GALLERIES