GINGER RILEY MUNDUWALAWALA

Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne
Private collection, Melbourne

In good and stable condition. Minor scuffs and discolouration to the edges of canvas at the stretcher and fine cracking evident in the white acrylic ground (from tension) at the edges of the stretcher.
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Ginger Riley belonged to the Mara language group but most of his work is concerned with the landscape around the Four Archers, a spectacular range of hills on the Limmen Bight River some 50 kilometres inland the south-western corner of the Gulf of Carpentaria, in his mother's country for which he was a jungkayi or custodian. This region is the setting for his paintings.

Omnipresent in Munduwalawala's paintings is Ngak Ngak the white-breasted sea eagle.  Ngak Ngak is the artist's guardian spirit but perhaps his alter-ego as well: Munduwalawala's presence within the picture frame witnessing the unfolding creation of the universe in ancestral times. Ngak Ngak may appear several times within the one painting; in this case he appears once in white, and again painted green. When asked why he painted the white-breasted sea eagle green, the artist's reply was that it simply looked more powerful that way (Ryan, J., Ginger Riley, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1997, p.20, and see also Ngak Ngak, the Sea Eagle, 1988, in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, in Ryan 1997, p.45, plate 3, illus.)

The quasi-heraldic composition of this work is also typical of several of Munduwalawala's paintings; see Garimala and Ngak Ngak, 1989, in the Holmes à Court Collection, and Angry Bulukbun, 1990, where Ngak Ngak faces off against the fire-breathing, bristling serpent (in Ryan 1979, p.62, plate 20, and p.69, plate 28 respectively, illus.). The upper half of this painting is framed in rows of triangles derived from the body painting on the chest and shoulders of ritual participants.

Among several awards, Munduwalawala won the Alice Prize in 1992, the first National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Commission Art Award in 1993 and the John McCaughey Memorial Art Prize in 1994. In 1997, Riley was the first Aboriginal artist to be granted a retrospective exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria.