Jimmy Midjawmidjaw

(b Croker Island, N. Territory, 1897; d c. 1985). Australian Aboriginal painter. His language group was Kunwinjku, and he belonged to the clan Mirarr. During his life he occasionally moved between living on Croker Island and at Oenpelli on the mainland. He was well known for his broad ceremonial experience. His first bark paintings were made for the anthropologists Ron Berndt and Catherine Berndt when they visited Oenpelli in 1947 and in 1949-50. He produced a number of paintings of ceremonial and sorcery themes for them, as well as a sculpted clay figure. He was living at Croker Island with Yirawala when the French anthropologist Karel Kupka collected their work in 1963. Midjawmidjaw's early paintings, such as Warramurrungunjdji, the Fertility Mother (c. 1963; Canberra, N.G.), show a strong affinity with rock painting techniques in the bold and rough textured application of paint in solid blocks of colour. While living at the Oenpelli mission he began producing works for sale there in the 1960s. The production of art and craft had become a major community occupation by then. Midjawmidjaw's common subjects were images of the animal species and spirit figures celebrated in ceremonies of the region. He occasionally employed the characteristic body designs of these ceremonies to infill his figures. For example Ron Berndt collected the Mythic Kangaroo Nadulmi (1948; Perth, U. W. Australia, Anthropol. Res. Mus.), in which the body design kunmed, a pattern consisting of rings of coloured dots, was used to decorate an image of the antilopine kangaroo as celebrated in the Wubarr ceremony.

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