Water Dreaming of my Father’s Country
Roger Yilarama, 1993
Arnhem Land, Australia
Collected by Christopher Chippindale, MAA 1994.234
Many Aboriginal artworks depict the activities of ancestral beings whose movements created the landscape and whose presence is manifest in its features. This painting in ochre and clay on stringybark depicts the ancestral lands of the artist’s parents. The central bar represents the waterfalls that mark the boundary between the stone country, home to the fresh water crocodile, and the plains, where the saltwater crocodile and the barramundi live in the estuaries and billabongs. The different styles of cross-hatching refer to clan designs.
