John Mawurndjul: Curator’s Radar

Perhaps unusually for a retrospective on an Aboriginal artist, Mawurndjul’s input was sought at every stage of development, including the selection of works. This led to an exhibition unlike any staged before it. Rather than works being displayed in standard chronological order, the art was sorted and displayed in order of Kunred (sacred places).

Old and new hang close. And without the movement in time, the exhibition exists in what anthropologist W. E. H. Stanner, in his essay The Dreaming, called the “Everywhen”. The paintings are of Country using Country itself – bark and ochre – as a medium. A visitor moving though the exhibition space is moving through the sacred Country Mawurndjul has chosen to paint.

The label texts are written in Kuninjku (Mawurndjul’s language) and translated into English. All texts in the exhibition are in the artist’s own words; the Kuninjku words first on the labels, thus centred in the experience. According to Cumpston, this provides the viewer with a “much deeper sense of these stories as the artist was able to think and speak in his first language”.

The retrospective, the innovative way it was assembled and curated, has set a new benchmark for Indigenous art displays. The centring of the artist’s voice and deci- sion making will hopefully become more common in Indigenous art curation.

This article was originally published in Art Collector issue 87, JAN – MAR 2019.