ENRAELD DJULABINYANNA MUNKARA (TJIPUNGALEIALUMI) CIRCA 1882-1968 | Purukapali

Executed on Melville Island, 1950s
Dorothy Bennett Collection, Darwin
The Wesfarmers Collection of Australian Art, Western Australia
Sotheby's, Aboriginal and Tribal Art, Sydney, November 1997, lot 40
Private Collection, Sydney
Sotheby's, Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 31 July 2006, lot 53
The Luczo Family Collection, USA
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Please note there is possible restoration to the white pigment throughout the figure. The pigment generally looks stable although there are areas of wear particularly to the lower legs and an area of rubbing to the proper left arm. There is a crack running down from the stomach to the groin area approximately 10cm long, and another minor cracks to the top and lower back. There are multiple cracks running down from the top of the head down the face and head, and another large crack running down the inside proper left leg. There is some flaking to the wood to the inner surfaces of the arms, and a dirty mark to the back proper left side of the head. There is minor restoration work to where the feathers attach to the head. Please note, the item is mounted on and sold with a custom made stand. Subject to the above, the sculpture appears to be in very good condition.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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Cf. For similar and contemporaneous sculptures by the artist that were also collected by Dorothy Bennett see ‘Purukuparli and Bima’, c.1955, in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, in Caruana, W., Aboriginal Art, World of Art Series, Thames and Hudson, London and New York, 2012, p.90, plate 73; and ‘Mourning Pukumani figure,’ 1963, in the collection of the National Museum of Australia, Canberra, in Isaacs 2012, p.134; the latter figure is also illustrated with the title ‘The Artist in Pukumani for his Brother’ in Lüthi, B. (ed.), Aratjara: Art of the First Australians; Traditional and Contemporary Works by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Artists, DuMont, Cologne, 1993, p.158 (attributed to Tjipungaleialumi). See also ‘The Grief of Bima’, c.1965, previously in the Louis Allen Collection in O'Ferrall, M.A., Keepers of the Secrets: Aboriginal Art from Arnhemland in the Collection of the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 1990, p.32, plate 27. For a description of the early years of collecting of Tiwi art from Milikapiti, see Mountford, C.P., The Tiwi, their Art, Myth and Ceremony, Phoenix House, London, 1958; Barnes, K., Kiripapurajuwi (Skills of Our Hands): Good Craftsman and Tiwi Art, Kathy Barnes, Darwin, 1999; and Isaacs, 2012.  

Enraeld Munkara’s figure sculptures are particularly distinctive and ‘unique in the way they capture the abject grief of bereaved ancestors with their hunched shoulders and numbed expressions’.¹ The bulbous, slightly protruding head and the shoulders are usually carved as a block from which the arms hang straight down in a pose that imitates a specific choreographed passage in Pukumani funeral dances. The pelvis is well-defined to create a negative space between the legs – a reference to the ‘windows’ cut into tutini or the painted posts that surround the grave of the deceased. And a number of Munkara’s sculptures are Janus-like, usually featuring the ancestor Purukaparli, the ‘father’ of all Tiwi, on one side, and his errant wife Waiyai on the other. Some of Munkara’s figures are attached to a carved and painted base that is lacking in the two examples here, which suggests that these works may have had a ceremonial function.

 

In the mid-1950s, Enraeld Djulabinyanna Munkara, together with Cardo Kerinauia (c.1900-c.1964), was at the forefront of a new development in sculpture for which the Tiwi people of Bathurst and Melville Islands, to the north of Darwin, are renowned. They began to make naturalistic painted figure carvings that were placed on a grave to ward off malicious spirits.² The form of the carvings is derived from that of tutini. Although to the Western eye tutini appear abstract, they are in fact conventionalized representations of the human figure.

 

For most of the early 20^th century, a ban imposed on Tiwi ceremonial practice by the Catholic mission on Bathurst Island in 1911 resulted in little sculpture being made, although some rites were held secretly on Melville Island where Enraeld Munkara worked at Milikapiti (Snake Bay). Milikapiti was further away from missionary influences than any other Tiwi community. Although figurative sculptures first appeared in the 1930s, these were few in number and not made on a regular basis. In the post-war period, Munkara, Kerinaiua and a small number of other Tiwi artists began to sculpt naturalistic representations of ancestral beings, most frequently of Purukaparli, Waiyai and Tapara the Moon Man. The three are the protagonists in the ancestral drama that brought death to the Tiwi. Purukaparli and Waiyai had an infant son much beloved by his father. However, while Waiyai and Tapara were conducting their illicit dalliance, the neglected child died. In grief, Purukaparli carried the body of his dead son out to sea where he drowned.

 

The artists of Milikapiti were also less likely to be influenced by European dictates and their work attracted the attention of major collectors including the anthropologists Jane Goodale, C.P. Mountford and later Helen Groger-Wurm, Stuart Scougall and Tony Tuckson (who collected for the Art Gallery of New South Wales), Dorothy Bennett, J.A. Davidson and the pioneering American collector Louis Allen.

WC 

1 Margie West in Cubillo, F. and W. Caruana (eds.), Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art: Collection Highlights, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2010, p.109

2 J. Morris quoted in Isaacs, J., Tiwi: Art/History/Culture, Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2012, p.134