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COAST / LINES: Garawan Wanambi & Manini Gumana

Past exhibition
15 April - 17 May 2015
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Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Manini Gumana, Garraparra

Manini Gumana Australian, Arnhemland, b. 1977

Garraparra
natural ochre and pigment on plywood
52 x 75 cm
828415
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Garraparra is a coastal headland and bay area within Blue Mud Bay. It marks the spot of a sacred burial area for the Dhalwanu clan and a site where dispute...
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Garraparra is a coastal headland and bay area within Blue Mud Bay. It marks the spot of a sacred burial area for the Dhalwanu clan and a site where dispute was formally settled by Makarrata (a trial of ordeal by spear which settled serious grievance and sealed the peace forever).

During the times after the "first mornings" ancestral hunters left the shores of Garraparra in their canoe towards the horizon hunting for turtle. Sacred songs and dance narrate the heroic adventures of these two men as they passed sacred areas, rocks and saw ancestral totems on their way. Their hunting came to grief, with the canoe capsizing and the hunters being drowned. The bodies washed back to the shores of Garraparra with the currents and tides, as the Wanupini followed with its rain and wind. Their canoe with paddle and totems queen fish Makani and long tom Minyga and turtle Garun are all referred to in the songs and landscape.

Makarrata, the ritual throwing of spears at a miscreant of Yolnu law took place here. At Garraparra sacred trees held barbed spears whilst not in use.

Garraparra has been rendered by the wavy design for Yirritja saltwater in Blue Mud Bay called Munurru. The Munurru is deep water that has many states and connects with the sacred waters coming from the land estates by currents and tidal action. Other clans of Bule Mud Bay that share similar mythology of the Yinapunnapu, ie the Madarrpa and Mangalili also paint the deeper saltwater - the Munurru as such. This sacred design shows the water of Djalma Bay chopped up by the blustery South Easterlies of the early Dry Season.

From freshwater the waters migrate to Mungurru the mighty undifferentiated Yirritja saltwater ocean that plays the horizon which receives and unifies all the Yirritja coastal saltwaters in one. It is from here that the water (soul) transmogrifies to vapour to enter the "pregnant" Wanupini (Wet Season storm couds) which carry the life giving freshwater back to the start of the cycle.
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  • Garawan Wanambi

    Garawan Wanambi

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