Mandidaidai ("Tiger")

Lance Bennett, acquired from the artist at Mudjinberri (Mudjinbardi), 1966

The Thomas Vroom Collection, The Netherlands

Sotheby's, London, Aboriginal Art - Thomas Vroom Collection, June 10, 2015, lot 34

Private Collection

Lance Bennett's accompanying documentation reads in part:

"An intense, brooding man, Mandidaidai attached a passionate importance to the secret ceremonial life. He was highly regarded as a singer of both secret and public song. Born in country known as Guwidji, east of the lower reaches of the Liverpool River, he lived a traditional life for many years. In 1939 he walked 200 miles south-west to Goodparla cattle station where he 'just sat down', having access to tobacco and other desired western goods, but without employment. In 1940 he and other unemployed Aborigines at Goodparla were collected by the army and taken to the township of Pine Creek where he worked as a labourer for the army for the duration of World War II. After the war he spent some years in the township of Katherine, employed by the Department of Welfare as a woodchopper. Later, he had a job as a gardener at Beswick cattle station, and then squatted two miles out of the little gold mining township of Pine Creek with a large group of unemployed Aborigines. Finally, 'Welfare' picked him up and took him to the remote Mudginberri cattle station, between the South Alligator and East Alligator Rivers. Here again he could find no employment, but he used the small Aboriginal camp on Mudginberri as a base for semi-traditional lifestyle. The artist described the two figures as wayarra, a general Rembarrnga term for 'spirit'. The taller figure is the father, the small his son. The father is wearing a skirt made of strips of fur of manburrebar (the rock possum). These spirits live in the stone country and are dirrima (dangerous). They are shown with long hair that streams in the wind as they leap about. This bark was painted for Bennett during one of his visits to the small Aboriginal community on Mudjinberri cattle station, between the South and East Alligator Rivers, in the dry season of 1966."

Cf. For another example by the artist, formerly in the private collection of Dorothy Bennett, see Sotheby's, Melbourne, Aboriginal Art, July 9, 2001, lot 18

Image Credits

Mandidaidai ("Tiger") © Estate of Lance Bennett