Background
He is a member of the Kuninjku people of West Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, and grew up with only occasional contact with non-indigenous people and culture.
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John Mawurndjul
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Mawurndjul"s artwork is highly regarded internationally. He uses traditional motifs in innovative ways to express spiritual and cultural values. His is currently living a traditional lifestyle at an outstation near Maningrida which includes hunting and a continuation of his paintings.
He was tutored in rarrk, a traditional painting technique using fine cross-hatching and infill, and began producing small paintings on bark.
Since then he has been included in major exhibitions in Australia and overseas (primarily in Japan and Europe). In 2000, Mawurndjul"s work was amongst that of eight individual and collaborative groups of Indigenous Australian artists shown in the prestigious Nicholas Hall at the Hermitage Museum in Russia.
The exhibition received a positive reception from Russian critics, one of whom wrote: This is an exhibition of contemporary art, not in the sense that it was done recently, but in that it is cased in the mentality, technology and philosophy of radical art of the most recent times. Number one, other than the Aborigines of Australia, has succeeded in exhibiting such art at the Hermitage.
His work was subsequently the subject of a major retrospective in Basel (2005) and in Hanover"s Sprengel Museum (2006).
2003 saw Mawurndjul named by Australian Collector magazine as one of the country"s 50 most collectible artists.
