Art Unknown 1960 Kandarik the kangaroo man

Artist:          Unknown
Collected:     c1960 West Arnhem Land
Title:            Kangaroo
Size:            58cm x 28cm
 

Ex Palm Springs Art Museum, California USA 1978-2005

In the Dreaming when the Ancestral Heroes were making the land and the laws, they could change at will from human to animistic forms.  Nagorka, the Barramundi man in to Barramundi, Minyaba the turtle man into a turtle and so on.

Kandarik the kangaroo man when making the laws for making the Ubar ceremony decreed that whenever the ceremony was performed, the kangaroo should be painted on adjacent rocks. If no rocks were available, kangaroos were to be painted on sheets of bark.  The Gunwinggu people say this is how bark painting started.

The painted kangaroo indicates  the presence of Kandarik at the ceremony. The artist owns an identical cave

 $460 AUD