Lot 72

The Artist, Milingimbi, Northern Territory
Private collection, Melbourne, acquired as gift of the Artist 1975
Thece by descent

"David Malangi Daymirringu learnt to paint by watching his elders prepare for ceremony, later beginning his art practice at the mission on Milingimbi Island off the coast of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory in the 1950s. The funeral of Gurrmirringu, as depicted in this bark painting, became his signature subject, one he would return to and experiment with, focusing on different aspects and perspectives.

The story of the great ancestral hunter Gurrmirringu is related to a place called Mulanga in Manharrngu country in Central Arnhem Land. On returning home after a successful hunt, Gurrmirringu rested under wurrumbula, the white berry bush, but an evil spirit disguised as dharpa, the king brown snake, was hiding in the tree roots. The snake bit and poisoned Gurrmirringu and, as he was the first man, his death brought forth the Marnharrngu clan's first mortuary rites.

Malangi was born into the small clan group of Manharrngu, the people of the mangrove. Through his father he inherited the Dhuwa moiety lands of Mulanga and Nurrunyuwa on the eastern bank of the Glyde River, and Dhamala and Dhabila on the western side of the river, and through his mother the Yirritja moiety lands further west near Yathalamarra billabong.

Framing the central scene of Malangi's bark painting is the wurrumbula in flower. As a formal structure these trees divide the painting, the symmetry honouring the highly ordered structure of the ancestral narrative and funerary ceremony to which it is linked. In the shadow of the trees' boughs lies Gurrmirringu's body as he is prepared for burial, the crosshatched designs on his torso representing his clan. Surrounding figures play the clap sticks and didjeridu, while the animals and triangular sections of wallaby meat signify both the spoils of Gurrmirringu's hunt and the mortuary feast." (Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney)

© David Malangi/Copyright Agency, 2026