Details of YawkYawk

Catalog Number : 26095
Size : 178cm x 14cm
Medium : Kurrajong with ochre&PVC fixative
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Yawk yawk is a word in the Kunwinjku/Kunwok language of Western Arnhem Land meaning 'young woman' and 'young woman spirit being'. The different groups of Kunwinjiku people (one of the Eastern dialect groups calls themselves Kuninjku) each have Yawkyawk mythyologies which relate to specific locations in caln estates. These mythologies are represented in bark paintings and sculptures of Yawkyawk beings. There are also a few examples of rock art images of these beings.
The female water spirits Yawkyawk or Ngalkunburriyaymi are perhaps the most enigmatic of myhological beings. Sometimes compared to the European notion of mermaids, they exist as spiritual in freshwater streams and rock polls, particularly those in the stone country. The spirit Yawkyawk is usually described and depicted with the tail of the fish. Thus the kuninjku people sometimes call them ngalberddjenj which literally means 'the young woman who has a tail like a fish'. They have long hair which has trailing blooms of long algae (called man-bak in Kuninjku). At times they leave their aquatic homes to walk about on dry land, particuarly at night.
Aboriginal people belive that in the beginning most animals were humans. During the time of the creation of landscapes and people and animals, these ancestral heros in human form transmutated into their animal forms via a series of various significant events now recorded as oral mythologies. The creation ancestor Yawkyawk travelled the country in human form and changed into the form of Ngalkunburriyaymi as a result of various ancestral adventures. Today the Kuninjku believe that Ngalkunburriyaymi are alive and well and living in freshwater sites in a number of sacred locations.
Some features of a respective country are equated with body parts of Yawkyawk. For example a bend in a river or creek may be said to be 'the tail of the Yawkyawk', a billabong may be 'the head of the Yawkyawk' and so on. Thus different groups can be linked together by means of a shared mythology featured in the landscape, which crosscuts clan and language group boundries.