Maningrida

Michael Reid Southern Highlands is honoured to present our first exhibition of works from Maningrida Arts & Culture, an arts centre based in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory and internationally recognised for its excellence. Maningrida artists live and work on Country, and their art engages with djang—the eternal, life-giving and transformative force that underpins existence. Djang speaks to creation ancestors, to the Country in which spirit resides, and to the ceremonial designs and songs through which those beings are recalled.

The region in which these artists live covers more than 7,000 square kilometres of land and sea. Their work reflects the cultural richness of over one hundred clan estates and more than a dozen distinct languages, each holding its own law, story and artistic tradition.

This exhibition brings together works by twelve highly skilled artists. It features carved wooden sculptures of the tall, slender Mimih Spirits, who taught the first people how to survive in the rocky escarpments of the Arnhem Land plateau, alongside Warraburnburn, spirits deeply embedded in Country. Six powerful lorrkons—hollow log forms painted with totemic designs used in mortuary ceremonies—stand in conversation with a suite of bark paintings marked by the distinctive cross-hatching technique known as rarrk.