Abraham Mongkorrerre, Ngarrbek (Echidna) Bark painting

Artist: Abraham Mongkorrerre
Title: Ngarrbek (Echidna)
Year: 2025
Materials: Tree bark
Size: 120cm high x 69cm wide (ready to hang with brace)

"We don’t paint the actual body, but its power. We represent its power with cross-hatching, we don’t paint its human form, no. We only paint the spirit, that’s all."

Mawurndjul

Maningrida Arts & Culture is a pre-eminent site of contemporary cultural expression and art-making, abundant with highly collectable art and emerging talent.

The first paintings on bark were made in the early 1900s (just 100 years ago). They were commissioned by missionaries and anthropologists, and the imagery was based on painted body designs and rock art. Since this time, artists in the Maningrida region have painted subject matter ranging from body designs to creation stories to workers on the Telecom exchange.

Sometimes people think of bark as being old and ‘traditional’ and canvas as being new and ‘modern’. However, one of the first paintings on canvas was made by Titian during the Renaissance (more than 500 years ago).

Painters in the Maningrida region invoke customary ways and practices, experiment with visual forms, and invent the contemporary. Their bark paintings merge the natural and spiritual worlds, the secular and sacred, and embody and evoke ancestral presence.

The subject matter of some works on bark express or focus on djang, the power of country itself, others the ancestral activities that created it or inhabit it: the powerful Rainbow Serpent Ngalyod, female water spirits including Yawkyawk and jin-Merdewa, and spirit beings such as mimih, Namorrorddo and Wangarra.

Some paintings feature geometric designs inspired by body painting. Spirit figures such as the long thin mimih spirits said to live in the rock country are also frequently depicted, as are animals hunted as game, including kangaroo, emu and barramundi.