Garn'giny not Granite (Moon Dreaming not Granite Mining)

May 19-28

Front: Mabel Juli, Wardal doo Garn’giny – Moon and Star Dreaming, 2021, natural pigment and ochre on canvas, 100 x 120 cm.

Left: Atlanta Mercy Umbulgurri, Old Woman Singing out for her Dog, 2021, natural ochre and pigment on canvas, 120 x 120 cm.

Text © Susan McCulloch Design © Lisa Reidy Images © The artists Published by Everywhen Artspace

Everywhen Artspace in association with Warmun Art Centre

Lyrical art for Country

Featured in this important exhibition are three generations of the same family of Warmun artists – the 89-year-old Mabel Juli – one of Australia’s most revered senior artists, her daughter, 43-year-old Marlene Juli and her 24-year-old granddaughter Atlanta Mercy Umbulgurri.

The genesis for the exhibition was the damage that had been done to the artists’ Country and their Dreaming sites by granite mining exploration on their East Kimberley lands at Springvale Station, between Halls Creek and Warmun in 2019 and 2020. A groundswell of support for the artists and other traditional owners was sparked when the issue came to public attention in 2019. The Kimberley Land Council is representing the artists and a nationwide online campaign garnkinynotgranite.com was established. A petition protesting the works now has more than 30,000 signatories.

In early 2021, to assist this campaign, Everywhen Artspace suggested presenting an exhibition on this subject to Warmun Art Centre. Mrs Juli, her daughter Marlene and granddaughter Atlanta responded with enthusiasm. Between January and April 2021, the three artists created a very special body of 31 paintings that portray in evocative imagery and extensive text, three of their Country’s most important Dreaming stories and other significant works.

With the shadow of the Plibara’s Juukan Gorge and Victoria’s Djab Wurrung trees still looming large, damage to Aboriginal cultural heritage sites is a topical – and ongoing – issue.

All the works in this exhibition amply demonstrate the importance of such sites and what would be lost if they were to be destroyed. Mabel Juli’s evocative, spare Garn’giny Ngarranggarni (Moon Dreaming) paintings epitomise the ‘big story’ such sites represent – taking us to the heart of human experience of love, mortality, kinship and obligation.

The exhibition features 21 works by Mrs Juli. These include a number of new Garn’giny Ngarranggarni (Moon Dreaming) paintings as well as those relating other ancient stories such as the Rainbow Serpent (Goorlabal) and Woman Singing out for her Dog. Mabel Juli’s stellar 25-year career includes representation in more than 100 group exhibitions in Australia’s leading public and private galleries and many solo shows. An 8 times finalist in the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award and winner of Melbourne University’s Kate Challis RAKA Award, Mabel Juli’s work is in the collections of many Australian public galleries and significant private collections internationally.

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Included also are two of Mrs Juli’s significant historical pieces that relate a violent 1940s incident when pastoralist Tom Quilty beat a young Gija boy and Mrs Juli’s father defended him.

Other works feature the wildlife of Darrajayin Country and places of significance, such as Mrs Juli’s brother’s birthplace and her grandfather’s burial place – a site now obscured by piles of displaced earth and shattered rock from mining explorations.

Marlene Juli paints Goorlabal the Rainbow Serpent who travelled to Springvale Station to find water. Today the Serpent’s gargantuan body lies as stone stretching across a large expanse of Country. During the mining explorations, the black granite that comprised sections of the Serpent’s tail was extracted leaving other stone sections of the tail broken into large shards and strewn on the land.

Talented 24-year-old Atlanta Mercy Umbulgurri has inherited the rights to paint her grandmother’s famous Dreaming story of the moon and the equally epic Old Woman Singing Out for her Dog – that relates the battles of the ancestral dingo and kangaroo.

In her interpretation of these stories with a new and fresh vision, Atlanta Umbulgurri’s striking black and whites and soft yellow and pink ochres are powerful reminders of the continuity offered by art to maintain, celebrate and honour these ancient stories and the vital importance of preserving the lands on which they are held.

They also introduce this young artist – exhibiting in a major show here for the first time – as an impressive new talent for this famous school of East Kimberley ochre painters.

Susan McCulloch OAM Co-director Everywhen Artspace May 2021

Darrajayin/Springvale and related Country The pastoral station Springvale is on Darrajayin Country and is part of the Malarngowem people’s lands that cover a large area between Halls Creek and Warmun in the East Kimberley. In 2019 after more than two decades of negotiation, the Malarngowem were awarded Native Title. Mrs Juli, her brother, the painter the late Mr R Peters grew up on Springvale Station on lands which hold the fundamentally significant Ngarranggarni (Dreaming) sites for the Garn’giny (Moon) Dreaming and Goorlabal the Rainbow Serpent whose body now lies as stone across a large section of this Country.

In the following paintings Mrs Juli and Atlanta Mercy Umbulgurri paint the sites, plants and Dreaming stories of Darrajayin lands. In a unique self-portrait Ngayin doo Marranyji – Myself and the Dingo, Mrs Juli portrays herself as a younger woman walking her lands. A strange dingo appeared, but fortunately did not attack her. “That marranyji (dingo) is Jawalyi skin. It means that’s my uncle.” she says.1 Mrs Juli has also recently painted two works of the community of Chinaman’s Garden, a market garden near Halls Creek, made famous

by Mrs Juli’s brother the late Mr R Peters for his painting of the site of a massacre there in the 1900s.

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Atlanta Mercy Umbulgurri, Darrajayin Ngarranggarni, 2021 natural ochre and charcoal on canvas, 30 x 60 cm | MM5312 | $580

Mabel Juli, Joorndam – Bush Onions, 2020 natural ochre and charcoal on canvas, 80 x 80 cm | MM5331 | $4900

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Mabel Juli, Springvale, 2020 natural ochre and charcoal on canvas, 80 x 80 cm | MM5308 | $4600

Mabel Juli, Tharriyarrel – Rainbow in Darrajayin Country, 2017 natural ochre and pigment on canvas, 60 x 80 cm | MM5325 | $3800

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Mabel Juli, Ngayin doo Marranyji – Myself and the Dingo (Self portrait), 2020 natural ochre and pigment on canvas, 45 x 45 cm | MM5328 | $2500

Mabel Juli, Yaranggan – Chinaman’s Garden, 2021 natural ochre and charcoal on canvas, 60 x 80 cm | MM5310 | $3500

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Atlanta Mercy Umbulgurri, Darrajayin Ngarranggarni, 2021 natural ochre and charcoal on canvas, 80 x 80 cm | MM5314 | $1800

Mabel Juli, Yaranggan – Chinaman’s Garden, 2020 natural pigment and ochre on canvas, 30 x 90 cm | MM5364 | $1900

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FamilyPlaces

These works depict two important sites relating to Mrs Juli’s family history on Darrajayin Country – her brother’s birthplace and the place where her grandfather is buried. She painted this latter site in early 2021 from memory, as a tribute to her grandfather and for posterity. The site itself has been so severely impacted by granite mining exploratory work in 2019 and 2020 that she can no longer find where her grandfather lies.

Mabel Juli, Place where my brother was born, 2017 natural ochre and pigment on canvas, 60 x 60 cm | MM5326 | $2800

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Mabel Juli, Nyawaroonoon – Grandfather’s Burial Place, 2021 natural ochre and pigment on canvas, 90 x 90 cm | MM5369 | $5900

Historypaintings

In these two significant paintings Mabel Juli has depicted a violent incident between the pastoralist and manager of Springvale Station, Tom Quilty, a young Gija boy and her father when she was a girl.

In 2021, she related the story to linguist Frances Kofod. The “young fella” (depicted in the right of the painting on p. 20 and centre in the painting on page 21 was having breakfast at the cattle camp at Springvale station before a big mustering job. He and his mates, she said, had been a bit late getting the horses to camp for the muster.

This angered Quilty (top left of the first painting and below left in the second work who started beating the boy on the head with a large bullock bone. “All the blood was coming out of that young boy’s head...”. On seeing Quilty hitting the boy, her father asked him “what you bin belting that boy for?” Her father then cracked a stock whip towards Quilty, chasing him away from the boy. “Old manager settled down after that,“ Mrs Juli noted.2

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Mabel Juli, Tom Quilty and my Dad, 2013 natural ochre and charcoal on canvas, 120 x 120 cm | MM5306 | $11800

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Mabel Juli, Tom Quilty and my Dad, 2013 natural ochre and charcoal on canvas, 120 x 120 cm | MM5305 | $11800

GARN’GINY Ngarranggarni (Moon Dreaming) Garn’giny Ngarranggarni (Moon Dreaming) and the related Wardal doo Garn’giny (Star and Moon Dreaming) have become Mabel Juli’s iconic signature pieces. In the collections of numerous public galleries and private collections, and in 2018 projected onto the sails of the Sydney Opera House, they have become amongst the most identifiable and famous images in contemporary Aboriginal art. The story is about a man who fell in love with a woman who was his mother-in-law within Gija kinship. When the elders refused to allow him his love, he cursed them and condemned humankind to mortality. This man comes back as the new moon every month, but humans die and our bodies return to the earth. The man’s love became the black headed snake and the stars are his promised wives.3 As described by Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art about a similar black and white Garn’giny Ngarranggarni in their collection “... the deep black surface is not just a setting for the story but a metaphor for the banishment of Garn’giny, evoking the deep isolation he felt.”4 Mrs Juli’s granddaughter Atlanta Mercy Umbulgurri has inherited the rights to paint this story from her grandmother and is interpreting it with great panache in her own style.

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Mabel Juli, Wardal doo Garn’giny – Moon and Star Dreaming, 2021 natural ochre and charcoal on canvas, 90 x 120 cm | MM5321 | $8900

Atlanta Mercy Umbulgurri, Garn’giny Ngarranggarni – Moon Dreaming, 2021 natural ochre and pigment on canvas, 120 x 120 cm | MM5368 | $2800

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Mabel Juli, Wardal doo Garn’giny – Moon and Star Dreaming, 2021 natural ochre and charcoal on canvas, 80 x 80 cm | MM5322 | $5400

Mabel Juli, Wardal doo Ngoomooloo – Moon and Cloud Dreaming, 2020 natural ochre and charcoal on canvas, 30 x 120 cm | MM5309 | $2700

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Mabel Juli, Wardal doo Garn’giny – Moon and Star Dreaming, 2021 natural ochre and charcoal on canvas, 100 x 120 cm | MM5320 | $10500

Mabel Juli, Garn’giny Ngarranggarni, 2021 natural ochre on canvas, 80 x 80 cm | MM5311 | $4500

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Mabel Juli, Wardal doo Garn’giny – Moon and Star Dreaming, 2021 natural pigment and ochre on canvas, 120 x 120 cm | MM5370 | $15000

Wildlife of Darrajayin Country Mrs Juli, whose traditional name Wirringoon means cockatiel, has had a long interest in depicting the birds and other wildlife of her Country.

These include Doomboony (The Owl) – a famous Gija ancestral figure.

Two Brolgas relates the story of two ancestral Brolga Women whose favourite food was bush onions. Their husband, the Frill Neck Lizard had hidden water from them. Finding his secret water source, the sisters scooped the water up in their coolamons and flew the water-filled vessels up into the sky. Their husband gave chase, throwing a spear that hit the coolamons, spilling the water and bringing it back to earth.5

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Mabel Juli, Goorrarnda-warriny doo Joorndam – Two Brolgas & Bush Onions, 2017 natural ochre and charcoal on canvas,70 x 70 cm | MM5327 | $3900

Mabel Juli, Doomboony – The Owl, 2019 natural ochre and charcoal on canvas, 60 x 60 cm | MM5329 | $2900

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Mabel Juli, Jawarlaliny – Tata Lizard, 2014 natural ochre and pigment on canvas, 45 x 45 cm | MM5324 | $2200

Mabel Juli, Goorrarnda-Warriny – Two Brolgas, 2021 natural ochre and pigment on canvas, 30 x 90 cm | MM5323 | $2200

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Old WomanSinging out forher Dog This ancient story is painted by Mabel Juli and her granddaughter Atlanta and relates events on Darrajayin Country in the Ngarranggarni (Dreaming). An old woman called for her dog (marranyji, an old wild dingo) who had chased a kangaroo (jiyirriny) across the land, following the kangaroo into a cave. The old woman followed the dog, calling for it, but the kangaroo had grabbed the dog and prevented it from going to the woman who searched for it in vain. Today the woman can be seen as a stone figure standing with her stick on top of a hill. In the paintings the dog and the kangaroo are depicted as two circles and the cave as a longer oblong shape below them.6

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Atlanta Mercy Umbulgurri, Old Woman Singing out for her Dog, 2021 natural ochre and charcoal on canvas, 80 x 60 cm | MM5319 | $1600

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Atlanta Mercy Umbulgurri, Old Woman Singing out for her Dog, 2021 natural ochre on canvas, 80 x 60 cm | MM5313 | $1600

Mabel Juli, Old Woman Singing out for her Dog, 2020 natural ochre and charcoal on canvas, 60 x 60 cm | MM5330 | $2700

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Atlanta Mercy Umbulgurri, Old Woman Singing out for her Dog, 2021 natural ochre and pigment on canvas, 120 x 120 cm | MM5365 | $2900

Rainbow Serpent

These works relate Ngarranggarni (Dreaming) stories about Goorlabal the Rainbow Serpent. In the Ngarranggarni, Goorlabal travelled to Springvale from the coastal area of north west searching for water.

Finding this on the lands of Springvale Station, he rolled on his back to cool himself – eventually turning into stone where he lies today, protecting the waterways. Goorlabal’s stone body reaches across several kilometres of Springvale Station. Several parts of the black granite sections of the Serpent’s tail were removed during the mining explorations of 2019 and 2020 and the adjacent rock shattered. In her painting of Goorlabal, Mabel Juli has painted the site where the Serpent lies. Her daughter Marlene Juli depicts the waterways entwined with the vertebrae of Goorlabal.7

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Marlene Juli, Goorlabal Ngarranggarni – Rainbow Serpent Dreaming, 2021 natural ochre and pigment on canvas, 45 x 120 cm | MM5366 | $1400

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Marlene Juli, Goorlabal Ngarranggarni – Rainbow Serpent Dreaming, 2021 natural ochre and charcoal on canvas, 45 x 120 cm | MM5316 | $1400

Mabel Juli, Goorlabal Ngarranggarni – Rainbow Serpent Dreaming, 2021 natural ochre and pigment on canvas, 80 x 80 cm | MM5315 | $4800

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Marlene Juli, Goorlabal Ngarranggarrni – Rainbow Serpent Dreaming, 2021 natural ochre and pigment on canvas, 100 x 120 cm | MM537 | $2800

MabelJuli Mabel Juli is one of the most dedicated and iconic of all Warmun artists. Her seniority and status as one of Australia’s most revered painters has emerged from a consistent and growing body of work characterised by bold yet simple compositions that are informed by nuanced and detailed stories passed onto Mabel from her family. She has been featured in over one hundred group shows as well as several solo shows throughout her career. She has also been featured eight times as a finalist in the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Awards (since 1994). Mabel’s Garn’giny Ngarranggarni and other dreamings continue to define the Australian Indigenous art canon; a testament to her iconic and striking expression of her Gija culture is yet again celebrated in 2018, when her Garn’giny and Bird artwork were animated in projections for “Badu Gili” on the sails of the Sydney Opera House.

Mabel Juli was born at Five Mile, near Moola Boola Station (south of Warmun), and was taken as a baby to Springvale Station, her mother’s country. Mabel’s ‘bush name’ is Wiringgoon.

She is a strong Law and Culture woman and an important ceremonial singer and dancer.

Juli started paintng in the 1980s, at the same time as well-known founding Warmun artists Queenie McKenzie and Madigan Thomas. The women used to watch Rover Thomas paint and one day he said to tell them, ‘You try yourself, you might make good painting yourself,” Juli says. “I started thinking about my country, I give it a try”.

Juli is a dedicated, innovative artist who continues to work in natural earth pigments on canvas.

She primarily paints the Ngarranggarni (Dreaming) stories of her country Darrajayin which is covered largely by Springvale Station. Mabel started work on the station as a little girl, and as a young woman moved to Bedford Downs Station and Bow River Station to work. Juli’s mother was Mary Peters. Juli is one of seven children – six boys and one girl, Mabel. Well known artist the late Mr R Peters was her brother.

Mabel left Springvale Station to be with her promised husband. Together they moved to different cattle stations in the Kimberley, including Bow River and Bedford Downs. Mabel and her husband had six children. He passed away in 1982; Mabel was 42.

ARTIST STATEMENT 2004: ‘I started painting when the old girl [Queenie McKenzie] was here – she was the one who taught me to paint. She told me, “You try that painting”, and I started to paint. I was doing that Garn’giny [Moon Dreaming]; that’s the painting I started with – because my mother and father told me that Ngarranggarni [Dreaming] story. I was reminded of all those stories from my mum and dad – like Glingennayn Hill and the Old Woman Singing Out for Her Dog. Those stories come from my county [Springvale]. “They used to take me out bush when I was a little girl – good size – and they told me all about those Dreamtime stories. And I always remember those stories. I got ‘em in my brain.”

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ARTIST STATEMENT, 2007: ‘I’m feeling pretty good. I like going to exhibitions, going to Sydney, feels good. ‘I’m always busy. I finish the work, the painting and go home. Go to [Warmun Community] council meetings, go to court [as an elder]. I got to make money to get tucker for my grandchildren. I still think about Aunty [Queenie McKenzie, who taught her to paint]. When I do paintings. She tell me about stories.”

ARTIST STATEMENT, 2018: “Ohh, too many years I’ve been working. When I was young, I was working around the school and my auntie Queenie [Mckenzie] asked me to do painting...I’m the first one to do painting. Other people, they all bin in the station, working you know... I’m getting old now. That’s what I do – painting – and my auntie, she learned me for painting. I’ve never do the [new] Ngarrganggarni (Dreaming) yet, only the old one. [The new one] might be next year... yeah.”

COLLECTIONS Tamaki Cosmology Gallery, Gravity Discovery Centre, Perth, WA Edith Cowan University Art Collection, Perth, WA Foundation Burkhardt-Felder Arts et Culture, Switzerland FTB Group Collection/Harland Collection, NSW Harvey Wagner Collection, USA Kaplan Collection, USA Kerry Stokes Collection, WA King Edward Memorial Hospital, Perth Murdoch University Art Collection, WA Art Gallery of New South Wales, NSW Museum of Contemporary Art, NSW National Australia Bank Collection National Gallery of Australia, ACT National Gallery of Victoria, Victoria Ian Potter Centre, Victoria NT University Collection, NT Parliament House Art Collection, Canberra, ACT Parliament House Art Collection, WA GOMA, Qld Wesfarmers Collection, WA University of Liège, Belgium

MarleneJuli Marlene Juli was born in Kununurra in 1975 and completed her schooling in Warmun at Ngalangangpum School. Marlene Juli has been painting at the Warmun Art Centre since 1999.

Juli was taught to paint by her mother, well-known Warmun artist Mabel Juli. Marlene Juli paints many of the stories and landscapes of her maternal grandfather’s country - Springvale Station (southwest of the Warmun community). Marlene’s father was from Port Keats in the Northern Territory and she paints some of his country and Dreamtime stories. For a young person who has not lived in her family’s traditional lands, Juli has a strong knowledge of the Ngarranggarni (Dreaming) stories of her grandfather’s and mother’s country. This is because she has visited these important places with her mother and has been told the stories associated with her family’s country.

Marlene has exhibited in more than 30 group exhibitions around Australia since 2001.

COLLECTIONS City of Wanneroo, WA Flinders University Collection, SA Kaplan Collection, USA Robert & Janice Hunter Collection, Coffs Harbour, NSW

Atlanta MercyUmbulgurri Atlanta was born in Perth in 1996. Her mother is Eileen Juli and her grandmother is Mabel Juli.

Atlanta has inherited the rights to paint her grandmothers Ngarranggarni (Dreaming) stories.

She lives in Middle Camp in Warmun Community and has lots of brothers and sisters and says she likes “fishing, camping out, basketball and football.’ Atlanta has one son Kendrick Chungerai and currently works at the Warmun Art Centre.

She has been included in two group exhibitions since 2008. Garn’giny Not Granite is her first significant representation in a major exhibition.

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Marlene Juli, Mabel Juli, Atlanta Mercy Umbulgurri, Warmun, January 2021. Photo Dominic Kavanagh

ENDNOTES 1. Warmun Art Centre certificate for painting 2. Warmun Art Centre, certificate for paintings as told by Mrs Juli with translation

by Frances Kofod 3. Garnkiny and Goorlabal not Granite www.garngkinynotgranite.com.au 4. Museum of Contemporary Art, https://www.mca.com.au/artists-works/works/2016.34/.

5. Jirewoorrarrem, All Kinds of Birds, Mabel Juli with translation by Frances Kofod, Warmun Art Centre, 2015. pp 4-9.

6. Warmun Art Centre certificates for paintings as told by Mrs Juli with translation

by Frances Kofod.

7. Warmun Art Centre certificates for paintings With thanks to Mabel Juli, Marlene Juli and Atlanta Mercy Umbulgurri, linguist Frances Kofod, Warmun Art Centre manager Melissa Callinan and especially outgoing Program Manager, Warmun Art Centre, Dominic Kavanagh, Alex Romano and Gabrielle Timmins from the Kimberley Land Council, Robyn Sloggett, Cripps Foundation Chair in Cultural Materials Conservation and Director, The Grimwade Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation, Melbourne University, Tom Civil for suggesting that we consider presenting an exhibition on this theme, Sylvia Page from garnkinynotgranite.com, Colin Golvan AM QC for agreeing to open the exhibition, and Helen Bogdan and all at The Lennox for inviting us to exhibit in such a lovely space and making us feel so welcomed.

May 19-28, 2021 The Lennox, 208 Lennox Street, Richmond, Vic 3121 Everywhen Artspace in association with Warmun Art Centre mccullochandmcculloch.com.au everywhenartspace.com.au warmunart.com.au

EVERYWHEN Artspace specialises in contemporary Australian Aboriginal art featuring paintings, barks, ochres, ceramics, sculptures and works on paper from 40 + Aboriginal art centres around Australia.

Directors Susan McCulloch OAM and Emily McCulloch Childs.

EVERYWHEN Artspace 39 Cook Street, Flinders VIC 3929 T: +61 3 5989 0496 E: info@mccullochandmcculloch.com.au mccullochandmcculloch.com.au everywhenart.com.au