Motu

Label

Every wet season, incoming waters flood the plains and then the mangrove-lined creeks before emptying into the sea. The fallen leaves of the mangrove trees bank up on the surface in fields of red, yellow, and black, known as motu. During the ancestral times, Burrut’tji, the Lightning Serpent, traveled underground from Baraltja to Gäṉgaṉ. The spine of the snake was laid underwater as part of the fish trap made by powerful ancestral beings. The remains of this trap create the natural conditions which concentrate the banking up of motu on the tidal creek leading out of Baraltja.

From the 2022 exhibition Maḏayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Painting from Yirrkala, curated by Mr. W. Waṉambi; Djambawa Marawili AM; Wäka Munuŋgurr; Yinimala Gumana; Henry Skerritt; and Kade McDonald

Course History

ANTH 3, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Sienna Craig, Summer 2013

ANTH 27.01, Economic Anthropology, Maron Greenleaf, Fall 2022

ANTH 31.01/WGSS 36.01, Gender in Cross Cultural Perspectives, Sabrina Billings, Fall 2022

ENVS 85.01/NAIS 81.04, Land, Love, and Kinship, Nicholas Reo, Fall 2022

GEOG 11.01, Qualitative Methods, Abigail Neely, Fall 2022

GEOG 31.01, Postcolonial Geographies, Erin Collins, Fall 2022

NAIS 25.01, Indian Country Today, N. Bruce Duthu, Fall 2022

SART 27.01, Printmaking I, Tricia Treacy, Fall 2022

Exhibition History

Madayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Paintings from Yirrkala, Henry Skerritt and Jami Powell, September 3 - December 4, 2022, Luise and Morton Kaish Gallery, Owen Robertson Cheatham Gallery, Citrin Family Gallery, Northeast Gallery, Engles Family Gallery, Israel Sack Gallery, Rush Family Gallery, Harteveldt Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire

Publication History

Stephen Gilchrist, editor, Crossing Cultures, The Owen and Wagner Collection of Contemporary Aboriginal Art at the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2012, p. 13, Fig 1.11.

Provenance

Buku Larrngay Mulka, Yirrkala, Northern Territory, Australia; Annandale Galleries, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia; sold to Will Owen (1952-2015) and Harvey Wagner (1931-2017), Chapel Hill, North Carolina, June 29, 2006; given to present collection, 2009.

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