Traditions & vernacular · 1912–present · Oceania

Arnhem Land Bark Painting & Rarrk

Also known as Rarrk (cross-hatching), Yolŋu bark painting, Kunwinjku and Kuninjku bark painting, Miny'tji (Yolŋu sacred clan design), X-ray painting (western Arnhem Land)

Painting in ochres on flattened stringybark by Yolŋu, Kunwinjku, Kuninjku and other clans of Arnhem Land, carrying ceremonial designs into portable form; collected from 1912, painted through art centres since the 1970s. Red, yellow, black and white are laid as fields of fine parallel and crossed lines (rarrk) that make the surface shimmer. In the east, owned clan designs, many of them diamond lattices, fill segmented panels; in the west, ancestral beings and animals stand on a plain ground, often in x-ray. Barks have served as petitions to Parliament and as evidence of title to sea country.

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A sample layout drawn from the style’s design choices. Stylogeny doesn’t generate images of this style, out of respect for the people it belongs to.

Use it with care

Arnhem Land bark paintings carry clan designs (Yolŋu miny'tji) and ancestral stories that belong to particular clans and moieties: a Yolŋu viewer can tell the painter's clan from the design, uninitiated people paint only 'outside' stories while 'inside' stories are restricted, and painting an inside story does not give the right to tell it. Rarrk and clan designs are not a free 'Aboriginal pattern': do not imitate them, a particular painting, x-ray figures or any clan's design for branding, products, souvenirs or generated images, and never present a generated image as a bark painting. David Malangi's mortuary-feast design was put on the 1966 one-dollar note without his knowledge because officials assumed the artist was anonymous and probably long dead; he was paid only after H. C. Coombs intervened, an early episode in Aboriginal copyright. In the Carpets case (Milpurrurru v Indofurn, Federal Court, 1994), brought by the Ramingining bark painter George Milpurrurru, the Rirratjingu artist Banduk Marika and other artists and estates, Marika said she held her image on trust for all the Yolŋu with an interest in the story; the court called the copying onto rugs 'plainly deliberate and calculated' and awarded damages that included cultural hurt. In Bulun Bulun v R & T Textiles (1998) the Ganalbingu painter Johnny Bulun Bulun, with George Milpurrurru for the clan, sued over his 1978 bark Magpie Geese and Water Lilies at the Waterhole, altered and copied onto fabric sold nationally; the court found that he owed his clan a duty to protect the design. An earlier case over T-shirts printed with his work (Bulun Bulun v Nejlam, 1989) was settled. A painter may veil a sacred design under figures, or figures under a design: never strip a layer away to expose what lies beneath. Commission and license work through community-owned art centres such as Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka, Maningrida Arts & Culture, Bula'Bula Arts and Injalak Arts and through Indigenous Art Code members, pay and credit each artist by name, clan and community, reproduce a bark whole unless the artist and art centre agree otherwise, and follow Creative Australia's Protocols for using First Nations Cultural and Intellectual Property in the Arts. Communities may ask that the names and images of people who have died not be used: follow the name the art centre now gives, for example Balang Nakurulk for John Mawurndjul during the period of mourning.

How it works

Lay colour as fields of fine parallel lines, crossed or set at angles, instead of flat fills, so the surface shimmers with what Yolŋu call bir'yun, brilliance, a quality linked to ancestral power.
Keep to four earth colours, red and yellow ochre, charcoal black and white pipeclay, on a dark red, black or white ground.
Divide the rectangle into segments, each holding a place, a being or an episode, so the bark can map country, and fill each segment with its own hatching instead of making one picture in perspective; in the east many clan designs are lattices or strings of diamonds (the Gumatj fire design Gurtha, the Maḏarrpa diamonds), each the owned miny'tji of a clan and place.
Let an ancestral being or animal stand alone on a plain ground, showing its bones and organs in x-ray where the story calls for it, or lay figures over a field of clan design, as older Yolŋu barks did to veil the miny'tji and protect viewers from its power.
When words must appear, keep them apart from the painting, as the Yirrkala petitions set typed text inside a painted border.
Paint a clan's design only by right: the pattern tells a Yolŋu viewer the painter's clan and moiety, and 'inside' stories are restricted to the initiated.

Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia: Yolŋu clans of north-east Arnhem Land (Yirrkala, Blue Mud Bay), painters of Central Arnhem Land around Ramingining and Maningrida, and Kunwinjku and Kuninjku painters of western Arnhem Land (Gunbalanya/Oenpelli, the Mann and Liverpool rivers). Painting in ceremony, on rock and on bark shelters is older (the figures of western Arnhem Land keep their link to its rock art), and barks collected at Port Essington survive from the 1840s: two collected by Assistant Surgeon Richard Tilston before his death there in 1849 are in the British Museum. The period starts in 1912, with sustained collecting and commissioning: Baldwin Spencer acquired bark paintings removed from the roofs of wet-season shelters at Oenpelli for the museum in Melbourne and, through Paddy Cahill, commissioned over 170 bark paintings in the next decade. From the 1970s painters have worked through community art centres: Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka (Yirrkala, 1976), Maningrida Arts & Culture, Bula'Bula Arts (Ramingining) and Injalak Arts (Gunbalanya).

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition: Framed panels characteristic
All-over field characteristic
Isolated object characteristic
Central symmetry occasional
Space & hierarchy: Repetition & rhythm defining
Horror vacui characteristic
Flat hierarchy characteristic
Measured density occasional
Single focal point occasional
Sequential narrative occasional
Typography: Monospace occasional
Colour: Earth & mineral defining
Limited spot colours characteristic
Dark ground characteristic
Light ground occasional
Form & shape: Optical pattern defining
Stylised figuration characteristic
Rectilinear characteristic
Non-representational characteristic
Angular & zigzag characteristic
Biomorphic curves occasional
Surface & texture: Flat characteristic
Painterly brushwork occasional
Ornament: Folk & sacred symbols defining
Abundant decoration characteristic
Borders & frames characteristic
Geometric tessellation characteristic
Cosmic & celestial occasional
Imagery: Pattern & repeat defining
Line illustration occasional
Diagram & data occasional
Medium & production: Hand-painted defining
Architecture & signage occasional
Tone & intent: Spiritual & sacred defining
Authoritative & institutional characteristic
Communal & popular characteristic
Agitational & persuasive occasional
Avoids: Illusion of depth, Gradients, Fluorescent & neon, Full polychrome, Pastel, Naturalistic depiction, Gloss & highlights, Straight photography, Ornament-free

Palette

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Typefaces

Typed text framed by painted design
the Yirrkala bark petitions (1963) give the same words first in English and then in Yolŋu Matha, typed on paper on a Remington typewriter by Ann Wells and mounted inside the painted bark
Latin faces with full Yolŋu Matha orthographic support (ŋ as in Yolŋu and Buku-Larrŋgay, ä, and the underlined retroflex letters ḏ, ḻ, ṉ, ṯ, as ḏ in Maḏarrpa), e.g. Noto Sans, for titles, credits and wall text, spelling clan, place and artist names exactly as the art centre gives them
No script or typeface of its own
rarrk and clan designs are owned designs, not a pattern library or a font, so never set them as type, icons or decorative borders

Known for

Yirrkala bark petitions (tabled in the House of Representatives on 14 and 28 August 1963)
the same words typed in English and Yolŋu Matha, framed by bark painted by Narritjin Maymuru, Yanggarriny Wunungmurra, Mutitjpuy Mununggurr and Rrikin, against bauxite mining on land excised from the Arnhem Land reserve; Parliament House, Canberra (a third at the National Museum of Australia since 2009, a fourth returned to Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka in 2023)
Yirrkala Church Panels (1962–63)
two ochre-painted masonite panels about 3.7 m high, the Dhuwa panel under Mawalan Marika with Wandjuk Marika and others, the Yirritja panel overseen by Birrikitji Gumana; discarded by the church in 1974, salvaged in 1978 and now in the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala
Bark paintings from Oenpelli (Gunbalanya)
thirty-eight removed from the roofs of wet-season shelters and acquired by Baldwin Spencer in 1912, and over 170 commissioned through Paddy Cahill in the following decade, among them animals painted in x-ray; Museums Victoria, Melbourne
David Malangi (Manharrngu, Ramingining), the mortuary feast of the ancestral hunter Gurrmirringu, reproduced without his knowledge on the reverse of the 1966 one-dollar note; he was later paid after Reserve Bank Governor H. C. Coombs intervened
Yirawala (Kunwinjku/Kuninjku, c. 1897–1976), x-ray and rarrk barks, among the first in his region to paint white pipeclay as a full ground; 139 of his barks entered the National Gallery of Australia in 1976
Balang Nakurulk (John Mawurndjul, Kuninjku, 1952–2024; known as Balang Nakurulk during the period of mourning)
taught rarrk by Peter Marralwanga, rarrk paintings of Mardayin ceremony designs and the 100 m² ceiling Mardayin at Milmingkan, painted by artisans under his supervision, Musée du quai Branly, Paris (2006)
Saltwater
Yirrkala Bark Paintings of Sea Country, begun by Djambawa Marawili (Maḏarrpa) and 46 fellow Yolŋu artists after a sacred site at Garraŋali in Blue Mud Bay was desecrated in 1996; part of the evidence in the Blue Mud Bay case decided by the High Court in 2008; Australian National Maritime Museum
Gulumbu Yunupingu (Gumatj, 1943–2012), paintings of Garak (the universe) and Ganyu (stars), enlarged a hundredfold into a ceiling of thousands of dots at the Musée du quai Branly, Paris (2006)