Bark painting "mimis" (ancestor spirits)
Description
bark, red and yellow ochre, black and white pigment, two anthropomorphic beings in “X-ray style”, wooden slats for fixing, slightly dam., minor cracks;
a work of the artist Billinjara Nabegeyo, Gumadeer River;
in Western Arnhem Land the bark paintings are a natural developement of the remarkable cave art of this area. The stringybark eukalyptus tree offers ideal canvases for the painter, who rarely uses more than the four basic colours: red, black, yellow and white. Reds and yellows come from a variety of ochres including haematite, ironstone and limonite. White is generally gypsum or pipeclay and black is made from manganese ore or charcoal. All men in traditional Aboriginal society are capable of becoming bark painters once they reach a certain stage of ceremonial life. The paintings were often done on the bark sheets covering their huts. The subjects include ancestral beings, “mormo” or “mimi” and other spirits of the bush and caves, the Rainbow-Serpent, and malignant spirits such as “aranga”. Natural species drawn as totems, and for hunting and fishing magic. Men and women whose decpiction is a media for sorcery intended to cause illness and death chiefly in connection with love-magic. Many of the paintings in the huts are done for personal pleasure, and the sacred and magical subjects are painted in their ritual context. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the art of this area is its so-called X-ray character, a most unusual developement limited to western Arnhem Land.