Mavis Ngallametta’s work has personal significance

 

Wutan #2 2014 (illustrated) depicts a specific tract of land and its waterways in the Cape York region, Far North Queensland, leading to a site of significance to Mavis Ngallametta (1944–2019) — a sister work to Ngak-pungarichan (Clearwater) 2013 (illustrated). This large portrait-format landscape uses its height to chart a tract of land and water, from tiny inland streams through to wild rivers and rivulets, to the coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria, where Wutan — an historically, culturally and personally significant site — sits at the mouth of the Archer River.

DELVE DEEPER: The life & art of Mavis Ngallametta

Mavis Ngallametta, Kugu-Uwanh people, Putch clan, Australia 1944–2019 / Wutan #2 (detail) 2014 / Natural pigments and charcoal with acrylic binder on linen / 272 x 200cm / Purchased 2015 with funds from Cathryn Mittelheuser AM through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Mavis Ngallametta Estate

Wutan’s position at the mouth of one of the Cape’s great wild rivers ensured a rich hunting and story place for the local Wik and Kugu people. It was also the site of a radar station established by the Royal Australian Air Force in 1943, and locals have related stories of Japanese submarines entering the Archer River at this site. Many local men joined the Australian Armed Forces, working alongside their Torres Strait Islander neighbours in the Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion to protect the maritime borders of far north Queensland.

But for Ngallametta, Wutan has significance as a site of personal interaction — during the mission time, the school children would camp there. It is also her adopted son Edgar’s country, and he has moved back to manage the area. Ngallametta has said:

[Wutan] is my adopted son Edgar’s traditional place. He built a little shed there, it is a nice fishing place. For me it takes me right back to the time when I used to go here on school holiday. And I still go there now often. Even my friends who I take there enjoy it. Still today we like to go to that place, camping, fishing. There used to be a big coconut plantation. There is a well with fresh water. It is still there. That’s what we used to water the coconuts with. There used to be a boys dormitory where the point is a little further. We used to go schooling there when they were building the dormitories in Aurukun. We use to go to Amban, and then cross the river in dugout canoes. On Saturdays they used to bring us the rations. There were also lots of mango trees. There is one left now, a new shoot from the old days by the well. There were lots of banana trees, too. Every Sunday we swapped: People from Aurukun came and the ones at Wutan went back to Aurukun.1

Mavis Ngallametta ‘Wutan #2’

Mavis Ngallametta, Kugu-Uwanh people, Putch clan, Australia 1944–2019 / Wutan #2 2014 / Natural pigments and charcoal with acrylic binder on linen / 272 x 200cm / Purchased 2015 with funds from Cathryn Mittelheuser AM through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Mavis Ngallametta Estate

Mavis Ngallametta ‘Ngak-pungarichen (Clearwater)’

The sprawling landscape Ngak-pungarichen (Clearwater) 2013 is dominated by browns and bauxite red fields, cut by lines of stark white pigment and depicts a special site in the artist’s Kugu country. And so it has been with Ngallametta’s painting career — her unorthodox and highly idiosyncratic paintings, bustling with energy and life have seen her achieve a distinguished place among the top contemporary Australian painters a mere seven years after first putting paintbrush to canvas. Previously, Ngallametta was renowned as one of the Cape’s great weavers; like other senior Aboriginal weavers who have turned to painting relatively late in life, her works have a rhythmic linear complexity, evocative of her longer established cultural practices.

Mavis Ngallametta, Kugu-Uwanh people, Putch clan, Australia 1944–2019 / Ngak-pungarichan (Clearwater) 2013 / Natural pigments and charcoal with acrylic binder on linen / 200 x 290cm / Purchased 2013. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Mavis Ngallametta Estate

Edited extract from Bruce Johnson McLean, former Curator, Indigenous Australian Art, QAGOMA

Endnote
1 Artist statement provided for the 2014 Telstra NATSIAA, published online at <http://www.natsiaa31.nt.gov.au/view-artwork/6/448>, accessed 11 February 2015.

Acknowledgment of Country
The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land upon which the Gallery stands in Brisbane. We pay respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elders past and present and, in the spirit of reconciliation, acknowledge the immense creative contribution Indigenous people make to the art and culture of this country. It is customary in many Indigenous communities not to mention the name of the deceased. All such mentions and photographs on the QAGOMA Blog are with permission, however, care and discretion should be exercised.

Featured image detail: Wutan #2 2014

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