Mick Kubarkku
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“Along with his bark painting, Kubarkku was also a consummate sculptor”.
Margie West AM writes about Mick Kubarkku. Mick Kubarkku was an artist from the rugged escarpment region of western Arnhem Land renowned for its extensive galleries of rock art.
Mick Kubarkku was born around 1925 at Kukabarnka, a large wetland area near the Liverpool River.
Mick Kubarkku was born around 1925 at Kukabarnka, a large wetland area near the Liverpool River.
Mick Kubarkku – Balang subsection, Kulmarru clan, Duwa moiety, Eastern Kuninjku language
Mick spent a large part of his youth up until the outbreak of World War 11 with his family, moving between seasonal camps mainly on his mother’s clan lands and his father’s country on the Mann River, around fifty kilometres south of Maningrida.
As part of his instruction Kubarkku attended regional ceremonies including Kunabibi, Wubarr and Mardayin with men such as Ankor Kulunba, Peter Marralwanga and Crusoe Kuningbal, who were all destined to become well-known artists. Kubarkku had intermittent contact with Europeans during several visits to Oenpelli Mission and a stint at Milingimbi during World War 11, but not enough to necessitate learning English. After the war many people from the Liverpool River / Cape Stewart region shifted westwards to Oenpelli or to Darwin. Kubarkku admits that he was drawn to Oenpelli originally by his taste for tobacco and decided to stay on there for a while with his close relatives and more distant ones such as Bardayal Nadjamerrek.
As an adolescent, Kubarkku received art instruction initially by his father Ngindjalakku and uncles Nabulumo and Malankarra, painting onto the wet weather shelters constructed from large sheets of stringybark attached to a structure of wood saplings. These men were rock painters and taught Kubarkku in the eastern Kuninjku style of rock art that features figures decorated predominantly with dotted infill.
This style was different to the fine parallel line work used by the artists further to the west. In addition, Kubarkku was instructed in the use of the complex crosshatched body designs, rarrk applied during the Mardayin regional ceremony which was later superseded by the Kunabibi in popularity. When he lived at Oenpelli, Kubarkku painted a few barks for sale but didn’t start to paint seriously until the late1960s after his move to Maningrida. In his commercial artwork Kubarkku drew his inspiration from these two main sources: the eastern Kunwinjku rock art and ceremonial body designs.
With the beginning of the homelands movement in the 1970s, Kubarkku moved with his family firstly to Mumeka where he painted with Ankor Kulunba’s sons James Iyuna, Jimmy Njuminjuma (deceased) and John Mawurndjul. He also lived and worked with Bardayal Nadjamerrek (deceased) at Manmoyi for a while. By the late 1970s Kubarkku had establishedhis own outstation at Yikarrakkal on the Mann River.
It was during this period inlate 1970s and through the 1980s that Kubarkku achieved some national prominence for his distinctive figurative images often of namanjwarre, the estuarine crocodile. By then he had established his signature style, with dotting to decorate borders or sections of a figure’s anatomy along with internal crosshatching of alternating parallel bands of red, yellow and white ochre. This patterning was also shared with artist David Milaybuma (deceased), one of the artists he worked with at Maningrida in the early 1960s. By then the use of crosshatching was widely adopted by eastern and many western Kunwinjku artists, with each developing their own individual styles.
Part of Kubarkku’s repertoire includes ordinary animals, hunting scenes, and major regional themes of Ngalyod the Rainbow Serpent, Mimih, Namarrkon and Yawkyawk Spirits. In the 1990s Kubarkku also started to paint the Dird Djang, Moon Dreaming site from his country, producing a series of strong graphic images whose degree of abstraction was unusual for this region, but by no means new.
In the 1980s Kubarkku had already produced abstracted maps of his country in which the forms of the Rainbow Serpent and their waterholes were subsumed into more geometric shapes, circles and sinuous bands densely filled with rarrk. In some of his paintings the rarrk extended beyond the confines of internal decoration to cover the entire surface of the bark, overlaying the plain background so common in western Arnhem Land art. Such experimentation reflects the strong association Kubarkku continued to have with artists further east, as well as with John Mawurndjul and his brothers, who by the 2000s had developed this overall rarrk patterning into a new stylistic convention.
Along with his bark painting, Kubarkku was also a consummate sculptor, producing impressive works of Yawkyawk and Mimih Spirits in wood. The making of commercial sculpture at Maningrida was initiated by Kuninjku artist Crusoe Kuningbal, though Kubarkku says it was the highly individual Burarra artist England Banggala who really influenced him to make carvings. He produced most of these in the 1990s and some in early 2000s with the assistance of his wife Lulu Laradjbi.
Kubarkku grew up at time when rock painting was regularly produced in the sandstone galleries. Because of his invaluable knowledge he worked alongside Bardayal Nadjamerrek and other senior men on the rock art recording program begun by the Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation with the Australian Museum in Sydney in 1993. Around the same time he also worked on the major survey show of both his and Bardayal Nadjamerrek’s work for the Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory’s Rainbow, Sugarbag and Moon (1995).
His work is represented in major collecting institutions in Australia and has been featured in two National Gallery of Victoria exhibitions: Spirit in Land, bark painting from Arnhem Land (1991) and Power of the Land, masterpieces of Aboriginal art, (1994). Other major exhibitions include Aratjara, art of the First Australians, Hayward Gallery (1993-4), the Biennale of Sydney (2000) and Crossing Country, the Alchemy of Western Arnhem Land Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales (2004).
Mick Kubarkku – Balang subsection, Kulmarru clan, Duwa moiety, Eastern Kuninjku language
Mick spent a large part of his youth up until the outbreak of World War 11 with his family, moving between seasonal camps mainly on his mother’s clan lands and his father’s country on the Mann River, around fifty kilometres south of Maningrida.
As part of his instruction Kubarkku attended regional ceremonies including Kunabibi, Wubarr and Mardayin with men such as Ankor Kulunba, Peter Marralwanga and Crusoe Kuningbal, who were all destined to become well-known artists. Kubarkku had intermittent contact with Europeans during several visits to Oenpelli Mission and a stint at Milingimbi during World War 11, but not enough to necessitate learning English. After the war many people from the Liverpool River / Cape Stewart region shifted westwards to Oenpelli or to Darwin. Kubarkku admits that he was drawn to Oenpelli originally by his taste for tobacco and decided to stay on there for a while with his close relatives and more distant ones such as Bardayal Nadjamerrek.
As an adolescent, Kubarkku received art instruction initially by his father Ngindjalakku and uncles Nabulumo and Malankarra, painting onto the wet weather shelters constructed from large sheets of stringybark attached to a structure of wood saplings. These men were rock painters and taught Kubarkku in the eastern Kuninjku style of rock art that features figures decorated predominantly with dotted infill.
This style was different to the fine parallel line work used by the artists further to the west. In addition, Kubarkku was instructed in the use of the complex crosshatched body designs, rarrk applied during the Mardayin regional ceremony which was later superseded by the Kunabibi in popularity. When he lived at Oenpelli, Kubarkku painted a few barks for sale but didn’t start to paint seriously until the late1960s after his move to Maningrida. In his commercial artwork Kubarkku drew his inspiration from these two main sources: the eastern Kunwinjku rock art and ceremonial body designs.
With the beginning of the homelands movement in the 1970s, Kubarkku moved with his family firstly to Mumeka where he painted with Ankor Kulunba’s sons James Iyuna, Jimmy Njuminjuma (deceased) and John Mawurndjul. He also lived and worked with Bardayal Nadjamerrek (deceased) at Manmoyi for a while. By the late 1970s Kubarkku had establishedhis own outstation at Yikarrakkal on the Mann River.
It was during this period inlate 1970s and through the 1980s that Kubarkku achieved some national prominence for his distinctive figurative images often of namanjwarre, the estuarine crocodile. By then he had established his signature style, with dotting to decorate borders or sections of a figure’s anatomy along with internal crosshatching of alternating parallel bands of red, yellow and white ochre. This patterning was also shared with artist David Milaybuma (deceased), one of the artists he worked with at Maningrida in the early 1960s. By then the use of crosshatching was widely adopted by eastern and many western Kunwinjku artists, with each developing their own individual styles.
Part of Kubarkku’s repertoire includes ordinary animals, hunting scenes, and major regional themes of Ngalyod the Rainbow Serpent, Mimih, Namarrkon and Yawkyawk Spirits. In the 1990s Kubarkku also started to paint the Dird Djang, Moon Dreaming site from his country, producing a series of strong graphic images whose degree of abstraction was unusual for this region, but by no means new.
In the 1980s Kubarkku had already produced abstracted maps of his country in which the forms of the Rainbow Serpent and their waterholes were subsumed into more geometric shapes, circles and sinuous bands densely filled with rarrk. In some of his paintings the rarrk extended beyond the confines of internal decoration to cover the entire surface of the bark, overlaying the plain background so common in western Arnhem Land art. Such experimentation reflects the strong association Kubarkku continued to have with artists further east, as well as with John Mawurndjul and his brothers, who by the 2000s had developed this overall rarrk patterning into a new stylistic convention.
Along with his bark painting, Kubarkku was also a consummate sculptor, producing impressive works of Yawkyawk and Mimih Spirits in wood. The making of commercial sculpture at Maningrida was initiated by Kuninjku artist Crusoe Kuningbal, though Kubarkku says it was the highly individual Burarra artist England Banggala who really influenced him to make carvings. He produced most of these in the 1990s and some in early 2000s with the assistance of his wife Lulu Laradjbi.
Kubarkku grew up at time when rock painting was regularly produced in the sandstone galleries. Because of his invaluable knowledge he worked alongside Bardayal Nadjamerrek and other senior men on the rock art recording program begun by the Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation with the Australian Museum in Sydney in 1993. Around the same time he also worked on the major survey show of both his and Bardayal Nadjamerrek’s work for the Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory’s Rainbow, Sugarbag and Moon (1995).
His work is represented in major collecting institutions in Australia and has been featured in two National Gallery of Victoria exhibitions: Spirit in Land, bark painting from Arnhem Land (1991) and Power of the Land, masterpieces of Aboriginal art, (1994). Other major exhibitions include Aratjara, art of the First Australians, Hayward Gallery (1993-4), the Biennale of Sydney (2000) and Crossing Country, the Alchemy of Western Arnhem Land Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales (2004).
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