Aurukun & Maningrida Sculpture

UAP Workshops in Maningrida

UAP held a two week workshop with Maningrida artists in 2000 through the Maningrida Arts and Culture (MAC). Over this period, ten established artists learnt pattern making techniques, working with clay, plasticine and foam rather than the customary bark, wood and plant fibres. The subsequent moulding and casting process took place at UAP’s Brisbane foundry, with established sculptors Bob Burruwal and Lena Yarinkura. Maningrida Arts and Culture is a community based Aboriginal art centre in Maningrida, north central Arnhem land, Northern Territory and facilitates relationships between aboriginal artists and commercial or public galleries.

Manangrida Artists exhibiting with Gallery Gondwana
Brian Njinawanga (b.1949)
Is a Rembarrnga speaker of the Balngarra clan. He is a bark painter and sculptor, working in unique forms and media. He has created maradjirri poles associated with important diplomacy ceremonies, and buyamali, the ceremonial dancing staff. He also carves bones and replicas of traditional objects in wood, and perhaps most famously, has created sculptures from bones wrapped in paperback which allude to traditional Rembarrnga burial practices and the ceremony and belief surrounding them. His work has featured in a number of significant exhibitions and publications relating to Australian Aboriginal Art.
Lena Yarinkura (b.1961) is a Rembarrnga woman of the Burnungku clan. Like most female artists from the region, she is an accomplished weaver, but her innovative use of both fibre and technique sets her apart. In 1989 she began experimenting with making forms in paperbark, an adaption of the manufacture and use of paperbark items in ceremony. Five years later she concentrated on this technique and produced figures for which she won the 1994 Wandjuk Marika Memorial Three-dimensional Award in the national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. She won this award again in 1997 for yawkyawk water spirit figures. These were made with a technique usually used for pandanus baskets, painted in ochre and finished with feathers for hair. Lena now regularly uses these techniques to make a variety of sculptures such as dogs and echidnas. Her work has been continuously exhibited in major national shows since 1989, and is represented in nearly all major collections of art in Australia, including the MCA, NGV and NGA.