Lot 120: GEORGE MUNG MUNG , LANKERRJI - DEATH ADDER SNAKE c.1987

Inscribed, not in the artist?s hand, on the surface of the painting: ?Lankerrji?, ?Death Adder Snake? Bears catalogue numbers no.56 and A122 on stretcher on the reverse Natural earth pigments and natural binders on canvas

90 by 230 cm

Painted at Warmun (Turkey Creek)
Lord MacAlpine of West Green
Sotheby's, Tribal Art, Melbourne, 29 July 1990, lot 176
Private collection, Melbourne

Cf. For another painting intended for the community at Warmun, see Ord River Country, 1990, in Crumlin, R. and A. Knight, Aboriginal Art and Spirituality, Dove Publications, Melbourne, 1995, pp.36?7, plate 14

A great cultural leader and singer of the Gija people, Mung Mung would carve and paint using any available material. He, along with and Jack Britten (c.1924?2002), was one of the first artists to paint regularly at Warmun since the establishment of the bough shed school in 1979. This work maybe one of a number that had been kept at the school in Warmun as a teaching aid for Gija children (see also Rover Thomas, ?Numanary Rainbow Snake?, lot 122). Mung Mung?s paintings of the east Kimberley landscape are complex compositions incorporating naturalistic and symbolic imagery. In this early painting,most probably intended for the education of children, Mung Mung has adopted a more direct approach, depicting the landscape in plan view, where the rhythm created by the meander of the snake?s body is echoed in the row of hills on the horizon